by Ryder Stacy
Rockson shifted in his saddle and patted the big mutant horse on the side. It seemed a little frisky, uncomfortable tonight. They knew—all the ’brids knew when they were going out on a mission. Sometimes, when his partial telepathic powers were particularly receptive, Rockson could sense the thoughts of the big steeds—their simple needs, their devotion to Man, their strength. But not tonight. Tonight Rock’s head felt sealed tight as a coffin. The faces of Kim and the President kept getting in the way of the stars above him. Faces suddenly covered with blood, faces screaming as the Red Mindbreakers dug ever deeper with their laser probes—melting flesh, memory, being.
He gritted his teeth together, grinding them with a dull crunching sound. The Reds couldn’t have done it so fast. Their bureaucracy would slow things down. The Russian military machine was a great fat sleeping bear—deadly when fully aroused, but slow as molasses in rising from its lethargy. As much as the Doomsday Warrior had ever prayed—he prayed. He liked to think that he could pretty much handle things his way. But tonight he looked up at the skies, looked past the strontium clouds, past the bands of orange, writhing like luminescent snakes far above, looked on past the moon, beyond even the stars. He looked and searched and felt with all his heart for a God that he wasn’t even sure existed, and begged him to spare Kim’s and Langford’s lives.
They rode through the cool night at a slow, even gait, letting the hybrids set their own pace. They’d have to go slowly until they got out of the steep parts of the mountain range, but Rock didn’t want to be out on a ledge ten thousand feet up when the sun came up. The Russian unmanned spy drones had become more and more prevalent since the disastrous Red defeat at Forrester Valley. They continued to scour the mountains for survivors, unsure just how much damage they had inflicted on the Freefighting forces.
At last they hit the lower hills to the north, and the ’brids were able to pick up a little speed through the sloping fields of daisies, sunflowers, and puffs. Detroit came up to the lead, edging his smaller ’brid near Rock’s. His sharp, trained fighting eyes constantly scoured the terrain ahead. He had been out with Rockson on many missions—each somehow more dangerous than the one before. And each they had survived, often against overwhelming odds. But they were all mortal, mortal as any dumb slob lying with his guts hanging out of his belly in a gulley somewhere. And the near loss of his arm had made Detroit acutely aware of that fact.
“Starting to get a little old for this sort of thing,” the black Freefighter said with a thin grin as he glanced over at Rockson, bouncing atop the wide mutant steed.
“Never too old for a good battle,” Rock replied, though neither man could really see the other now that the moon had dropped like a corpse wrapped in dirty linen into the grave of night’s black soil. “How’s the arm?” Rock asked, glancing over at the muscular arms that were both raised, holding the reins.
“I swear it’s better than ever,” Detroit raised it, twisting it around in all directions. “I was having some muscle aches in the elbow—spasms—before it got cut. Now—nothing. Feels great. I been working out my pitching and grenade-throwing and I’m already up to my old stats. Fastballs at 95 mph. Grenades heaved over three hundred feet.” Detroit, besides being armed with the Liberator automatic rifle that Century City manufactured and shipped out to other Free cities as well, always carried nearly two dozen grenades in bandoliers across his chest. Grenades armed to explode, send out waves of burning phosphorous or stun gas. The ebony Freefighter was a one-man army with a portable arsenal. The two rode on in silence for a while, both enjoying the cool dew-scented breezes of early morning and the first choruses of waking birds, calling out their indignant high-pitched greetings to one another.
“Seriously, Rock,” Detroit said, turning again after a long period of thought. “Do you ever wonder where it will all end? I mean the war—the fighting, the endless bloodshed.”
Rock was just as thoughtful for a few seconds, and then he answered softly, “No.”
“ ’Cause ya know, while I was lying in the hospital bed, I had a lot of time to think. And when a man has too much time, I don’t know, maybe he gets to thinking about things he really shouldn’t. It ain’t a question of being afraid or anything like that. Even death—I been ready for his .45 into my brain for a long, long time. It’s just that—sometimes I wonder about settling down, having a wife, family. The whole thing. Have a kid who looks like me—take him fishing, teach him to play ball. Am I going crazy, Rock? I mean, these are myths right from my past. It’s like racial American memories, nightmares, right?” He looked at Rockson with a kind of desperation the Doomsday Warrior had never seen in the bull-shouldered fighter before.
Rockson allowed himself a deep exhalation, glancing up at the ocean of sky slowly changing from black to darkest purple, and turned back to Detroit, whose features were slowly coming into view as the edge of the sun just broke a ridge of pines ahead. “We’ve got a curse on us—me and you,” the Doomsday Warrior said solemnly to his right-hand man. “The curse of the Warrior. The curse of all those men who have had to spend their lives fighting, destroying, living in the very fires of hell. We can’t be like other men, my friend. Even though we might want to with all our hearts. Our nightmares are those of softness, and gentle caresses—the ties that bind. The nightmares of ten thousand bloody corpses—those we can live with, easily.”
Detroit listened with utter concentration, feeling the pain of his leader’s words as Rockson spoke.
“There’ve been men like us throughout history,” Rockson continued. “From the earliest times—Sumeria, Egypt, even the Stone Age—there’s been war, fighting, one army invading and another defending. We’re just a part of a long line of poor suckers who happened to get born into the wrong body, the wrong mind—that of the fighter. It’s what we do, Detroit. Do better than anything else. And without us, the Free Cities of America would crumble like sand castles beneath the Red waves. For better or worse, pal, you and me are in this life to fight. There won’t ever be cozy get-togethers with the kids and wife and dog around the fireplace. Won’t be picnics and ants, or junior’s first beanie—won’t even be no goddamned marshmallow roasts.”
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Detroit said, staring at Rockson with a strange expression as he sat bobbing a few feet away in his saddle. “You make it all sound so unappetizing, I don’t think I even want it any more, anyway.” The black Freefighter barked out in a loud laugh.
They came to a stadium-sized field filled with large blue and red melon-like fruits. At the far end, a grove of large-leafed trees grew, perfect cover for camping during the day.
“What do you think, McCaughlin?” Rockson asked, riding back around to the large Freefighter who rode with a pair of ’brids running along beside his. As the official cook of the attack force, McCaughlin was also responsible for all the kitchen supplies, mounted high on the two hybrids. He had to keep a constant eye on them, since without riders, they never stopped trying to slide the heavy loads from their backs. Like all living creatures, they were basically lazy by nature.
“I’ve eaten fruits like that,” McCaughlin said, eyeing the bounty now being trampled by the ’brids’ hooves. “Good, they were. Sweet as sugar,” he added enthusiastically, his eyes starting to grow at the prospect of cooking a full-scale meal for the team. “Might we be stopping at yonder trees?” the bear of a fighter asked with a mock-English accent.
“We might be, yeah,” Rockson answered with a grin. “Think you can whip up one of your miracle specials?”
“I was hopin’ you’d be askin’,” McCaughlin answered, slapping his ample stomach. “It’s been growling for hours. Told it I’d shoot it if the damned thing didn’t shut up.”
The men dismounted their ’brids and walked slowly through the fertile field overflowing with nature’s food. It felt good to stretch their arms and legs after traveling non-stop for almost twelve hours. They bent down and picked up some of the smaller fruits, stuffing them into burlap kn
apsacks that hung at the sides of the hybrids’ saddles. Then they headed on to the canopy of trees and set up camp for the day, unsaddling the ’brids and letting them graze on the leafy branches. They prepared their own blankets for some quick shut-eye. They had dozed off for less than an hour when the scent of McCaughlin’s cooking came drifting over, awakening them. Hunger is a more compelling instinct than the need to dream.
A big black bowl of rabbit and melon stew hung over a low fire, simmering to perfection. McCaughlin tasted it every few seconds, adding extra pinches from his cache of herbs and spices. At last he pronounced it “perfect” and doled out steaming bowls to the team. They were all here on this excursion. Rockson had wanted the very best, knowing they couldn’t get into a Red fortress with a major force. But a small, highly trained mobile unit like his might just have a chance.
It was the Rock team, of course—Detroit, Archer, McCaughlin, and Chen. In addition, Rock had chosen two of Chen’s top martial arts students, Du Soo of Korean ancestry, and Lenny Brown, a black teen, distant cousin twelve times removed of Detroit’s. He had been impressed by their speed and fierce warrior natures when he had seen them fight their way to the top of the Inter-Free City Fighting Championships. They were ready for the real thing. Rock had asked Reston, an old-timer with a salt-and-pepper beard that was as grizzled as a polecat’s rump, to come because of his knowledge of the Northern states. He’d done scouting up there years before. And finally, Ashton and Douglas, two researchers and psychologists from the Century City University. They were green around the edges and seemed somewhat uncomfortable thus far, having spent most of their lives among books, treatises, and questionnaires. But they were the foremost authorities on the Mindbreaker and on the methods of deprogramming those in the beginning stages of the Russian brainwashing program. If the President and Kim were still alive—and if their brains hadn’t been reduced to something that could be strained through a colander—then these two might come in real handy. If Rockson could keep them alive until then.
But as the team lay around the tree-camouflaged clearing, their mouths and stomachs filled with rich stew, life didn’t seem that bad. Archer shoveled whole bowls of the stew into his mouth like a starving beast and then handed the platter back for more. McCaughlin beamed as he ladled out portion after portion to the seven-foot mountain man.
“He’s still growing,” he laughed. “My food will add another foot or two to him yet. We won’t even need to fight. When the Reds see something that big coming at them, they’ll say ‘Holy Lenin, a race of radioactive giants’ and skedaddle the whole damned way back to Moscow.”
The untested members of the force laughed and joked with one another as the rest watched, smiling, but with a secret knowledge that didn’t allow them to laugh quite so freely. For they were already feeling what they did on every mission—the presence of death. Still dim, wavery around the edges—but there. Death had its dark eyes locked on the team. Even the usually placid hybrids seemed quite edgy, munching moist swollen leaves from the trees as they swung their furry heads from side to side.
Rock waited until the sun had begun to set again, falling gracefully like a burning swan from the cloud-bouldered sky. Nearly half a dozen of the drones had passed nearby overhead during the afternoon. But Rock was sure they hadn’t been spotted. From everything the Freefighting Intelligence had been able to put together, the drones were quite crude, often crashing before they could return home. With so much radiation throughout the country, including pockets of mega-rads, the small cigar-shaped craft often had their guidance and transmission systems knocked out. Rockson suspected that half the time their presence was just to frighten the Underground—make them think that Big Brother had his eye on everything, when in fact—the Red bear was nearly blind.
“Mount up, boys,” Rock said, cupping his hand over his eyes as he watched the sun completely vanish into its hole. “It’s dark enough now.” Rock jumped astride Snorter, the ’brid which had been with him now for years, somehow surviving, along with Rockson, everything that the merciless, radioactive world could throw at them. Rockson would never forget that the animal had saved his life once, dragging him to shade when he had been poisoned by deadly thorns and had lain unconscious for nearly two days. Ever since then there had been a kind of bond between the two of them, an unshakable loyalty of the kind that can only exist between human and animal. Rock waited a few minutes for the newer members of the force to get their things together as they ran frantically around the camp, hopping with one boot on, searching for their scattered things. Let them play the fool now, but not later, the Doomsday Warrior thought grimly as he watched the comedy from nearly six feet off the ground, atop six hundred pounds plus of the meanest running machine nature had ever produced.
At last he turned and set off toward the north, keeping a slow pace so the psychologists could catch up. Chen’s martial arts students had been among the first to get their things together and mount up. But then they had to do everything under the stern gaze of their Master, Chen, who Rock knew felt personally represented by these two and everything they did. Rock would have to tell Chen to lighten up.
He headed out of the woods and down the flattest terrain they had encountered so far, as even as a sheet of cardboard stretching off for miles, dotted with small pockets of trees and brush. As the others caught up and the entire unit got into a steady matched pace, Rockson slowly increased their speed so that after five minutes, without even realizing it, they were moving along at a good clip. Out here in the flatlands, the hybrid horses could really open up. They seemed to come alive, as if they truly lived only when they ran. Their thick powerful legs churned away like locomotive wheels, as their mouths opened wide, sucking in oxygen to fuel their bodies. The attack force rode along in perfect synchronization at full gallop, each man leaning far forward around the neck of his ’brid to cut wind resistance. Even Rockson had a smile on his face as they raced across the moonlit land.
The Doomsday Warrior suddenly raised his hand, and the force slowed to half speed. He had seen a glint ahead, and now, as they moved forward, they smelled smoke—and something else. Something he hadn’t smelled for months, and had prayed he would never smell again—the scent of burning flesh.
As they came over a low rise, Rock suddenly saw the bonfire ahead, burning with high snapping flames, and the sound of men’s voices. He moved his arm rapidly several times, indicating dismount, and the team stopped and jumped down from their ’brids.
“Chen, Archer, come with me—the rest of you stay here. Detroit, you’re in charge.” With Rockson in the lead, the Chinese martial arts master and the huge near mute followed closely behind, their weapons at hand. Archer unslung the steel crossbow that never left his side and auto-triggered it to fire; Chen whipped out four of his star-knives, two in each hand, ready to be flung in a fraction of a second. The three Freefighters slowed down as they came to a patch of high thorn bush. Just below they could see them—filthy, liquor-crazed men dancing in front of the fire. And around the putrid campsite were bones—human bones. Rockson quickly scanned the area: a large pile of bones to the right; five men strung up on poles—apparently dead. And two immense spits on which there were skewered two human bodies, speared from the mouth through the asshole, and cooked until the skin was an even crunchy brown. The laughing, scarred dancing madmen below, Rock saw on closer inspection, were holding pieces of the hacked-off flesh from the skewers—arms, hands, chunks of thigh, and even the inner organs, still raw, dripping with bloody juices.
The three Freefighters looked at one another with infinitely disgusted expressions. They all knew they did not have to go down there. Their mission didn’t call for it, and it was easy enough to bypass the area. Usually Rockson didn’t like to attack strange races, groups that he encountered, no matter how bizarre their customs, unless they attacked him first. But there was something about the cannibals that made his blood boil. Americans eating their own brothers and sisters. It seemed to him the most revoltin
g of all crimes. He checked his shotpistol and took off the safety.
“Ready, boys?” he asked Chen and Archer, who both nodded vigorous yesses. The three warriors rose as one and shot through the bushes that separated them from the cannibal half-men.
The drooling, slime-coated faces in the center of the clearing froze, as if caught by a photograph, holding their bloody dinners in their hands.
“Howdy, boys,” Rockson said, unsmiling. “We heard you was having a little banquet, so we thought we’d join in. Looks like there’s plenty here.”
The leader of the cannibal slime, an immense, very light-skinned, almost Albino man, who stood directly in front of the bonfire in which the other human appendages were sizzling furiously, turned toward the stranger. There were only three of them. Fools—to come in here like this. But they could always use more meat.
He cranked his head all the way around his neck, signaling his nearly two dozen men, who were spread around the site, to begin circling the three strangers. Then he erupted into boisterous laughter and took a few steps toward them.
“Yes—plenty here. Plenty of good parts. Which are your favorite? Brain, liver, heart?” He licked his lips and took a bite from the forearm he was holding. “How rude of me,” he said suddenly, putting his dried flesh-coated finger to his mouth in mock horror. “Me not offer guests food first.” He lifted the forearm with a sudden blur and threw it toward Rockson’s face.
At the motion, the rest of the cannibal crew came in from every side, knives, hatchets, pistols at the ready, screaming out animal roars of murder and hunger. Rockson deflected the spinning forearm with a quick upward block and swung his shotpistol up and around, catching the first of his would-be attackers square in the chest. The man’s lungs and heart exploded from his body in a hurricane of pink and red, but Rock had already turned to catch the next attack. The entire camp erupted in a frenzy of motion as the cannibals tried to zero in on the three strangers, who somehow kept slipping through them and wreaking havoc.