by Ryder Stacy
As Chen saw the first of the attackers leap, he released all four of his star-knives at once. They flew off in four directions and struck paydirt—two burying themselves in chests and the other two in heads, one going clear through a cannibal’s eye socket and gouging its way into the madness within. Archer fired at the Albino with his crossbow, the steel shaft catching the white-skinned leader in the upper right leg. The man limped off as a wave of the encrusted cannibals came right at the near mute. Archer could see that there just wasn’t going to be enough time to reload, and he hefted the entire bow, swinging it around like a club. Three bodies flew off as it smashed into them.
Rockson moved forward, trying to get to the Albino, but he was suddenly covered with punching fists and legs as five of the subhuman growling creatures grabbed at him from every side. The Doomsday Warrior flicked his shotpistol to full auto and pulled the trigger, moving his hand in a circle. The .12-gauge death dealer spat out shell after shell, dismembering, dissecting, and decapitating everything around him. A pair of arms reached from behind, slipping around his neck and pulling Rock backward. But he flipped the pistol under his legs and fired up. Whoever was behind him let go with a deafening scream and fell backward, groin spouting blood like a tributary of the Mississippi.
Freed of the groping hands, Rockson shot forward and caught the Albino by the arm, spinning him around. But the cannibal leader was fast—and as he came around he tightened his hand into a fist, catching Rockson right in the face with the entire momentum of his swinging body. The Doomsday Warrior sensed the motion at the last fraction of a second and relaxed his body, going with the blow. He went sideways, unable to grab hold of anything, and found himself falling into a trench filled with the debris of the cannibals’ food habits. Rock slammed into the pit full of human skulls, leg bones, and ribcages, smashing through them, breaking the ones he landed on into sharp pieces. He winced with pain as the razor edges of bone ripped into his flesh. The instant his fall was finally stopped, Rock righted himself and pushed up with all his might with his powerful mutant legs. He shot up nearly five feet to the edge of the bonefill and without hesitation took after the Albino, whose pasty white skin he could see heading off into the night.
As Rock tore ass toward the flesh-eaters’ commander, Chen and Archer were living out their second-by-second drama of life and death—only the other guys were dying. Until now, the bestial tribe had had no problems taking what they wanted, eating whom they wanted. But, then, it had always been twenty or thirty of them against a few wayward travelers, stupid or unlucky enough to enter their domain. The cannibals had thought themselves fearsome, tough, ready for anything the world could send them. Ready not only to kill, but then eat their opponents, absorbing them into their very bloodstreams—the ultimate insult. But as they faced the spinning Chinese bolt of lightning and the club-wielding giant, their ferocious expressions were replaced by looks of the sheerest terror.
Chen tore into the slime, no holds barred. Often, because he was so powerful, he had found that he restrained himself even when fighting his enemies. There had been several times as his high kick flew toward the faces of young Russian recruits, boys hardly out of their teens—that the Chinese martial arts master had softened the killing blow at the last minute, allowing the man to live. A few times . . . but not today. He unleashed his awesome powers of physical and mental control in a whirling dervish dance of death right through the center of the camp.
The world, whatever in hell was left of it, was better off without these Homo Sapiens maneaters. There weren’t enough goddamned people left to allow them to be eaten. With star-knives at the ready, gripped tightly in each hand, Chen ripped out side kicks through chests, swung his fists in hammer blows that broke necks like the hangman’s noose, and cracked open skulls as if they were coconuts, spilling their bloody contents. A large ugly fellow with but one file-sharpened tooth in his mouth came toward Chen, wielding a machete. The Chinese Freefighter grinned at the six-and-a-half-foot flesh-coated cannibal and whipped his foot straight up in a blur directly to the center of the man’s face. The thick red nose smashed flat as a pancake as the nasal cartilage and cheekbones caved in with a horrible crunching sound. Before the man had even had the chance to scream, Chen pulled his leg back and kicked again, this time into the handle of the machete that was still held out toward him. The flat blade, dull from its many head-cleavings, flew like the single blade of a propeller up into the attacker’s face. It slicked into him at nearly ninety miles an hour, cutting the center of his face and skull right through to the back. The two pieces of what had been a man’s head just seconds before fell away from each other, two semi-globes of pulsing putty, and splattered down onto the bloody dirt. But Chen was already gone, fighting his way in a concentric circle through the campsite.
Twenty yards away on the far side of the circular clearing, bestrewn with bones, lay Archer—covered with a whole blanket of cannibals—elbows, fists, everything moving into a tornado of violence over him. The huge Freefighter dropped his crossbow, useless at such close range, grabbed his long hunting knives from each side of his buckskin jacket, and with a wild animal roar, began spinning around, both arms fully extended. The huge arms were unstoppable and the long blades, gripped as tightly as the most precious diamonds, sliced up the attackers as if they had fallen into a food processor. So powerful were Archer’s thunderous blows that whole stomachs were slashed open, spewing their mangled contents of still-undigested human flesh. Whole backbones were cut through, their owners’ quivering bodies falling to a spasming death in pools of their own blood.
“Noooo eeeeaat Aaaarcchher,” the huge mutant cried out, holding both knives to the sky for a split second in prayer to the primitive mountain spirits that protected him. Then he lowered the blood-covered blades and waded into the next group that had volunteered to give their guts to the Lord Death.
Across the campsite, lit with the wild writhing flames of the fire, Rockson dove at the Albino’s feet. Just then the man reached a large pitchfork that had been leaning against the side of one of the half-fallen hovels. They both fell to the ground with a thud, the Doomsday Warrior’s arms wrapping around the immense cannibal’s ankles. But Rock felt the pitchfork coming and let go, rolling like a log.
The two-foot-long prongs slid into the ground as easily as a knife into butter, missing Rockson’s leg by inches. Again he was amazed by the swiftness of the man, who moved with the sudden violent speed of the grizzlies. He’d have to be careful. He came to his feet just out of reach of the pitchfork and suddenly realized that his shotpistol had been knocked from his hands somewhere along the line.
“Great,” Rock muttered under his breath as the Albino, his red-coated lips lifting into a sneer of disdain, came slowly forward, turning the end of the fork in a slow circle as if to show Rockson the long curved icepick prongs.
“I no think you taste too good when I eat you,” the Albino said. Then he shrugged. “But someone eat you—so no matter.” He laughed. Rock sensed that the laugh was the cannibal commandant’s way of diverting him for just the split second that it takes to . . .
As the Albino lunged forward, Rockson grabbed hold of the fork itself, slipping his fingers between the prongs. He guided the end straight down into the dirt, where it buried itself to the hilt. The Albino was unable to stop. His huge mass of flesh-filled fat was carried forward onto the handle of the fork, which buried itself deep in his stomach. It catapulted him straight over the top like a pole vaulter, sending the screaming killer nearly five yards through the air and then onto his head on the ground, just a few feet away from the blazing fire.
Rockson pulled the pitchfork from the ground with a sneer and walked toward the cannibal master, who was slowly rising from a pool of nearby corpses’ blood, shaking his battered head. The sparks and glowing coals of the immense bonfire, its flames now reaching ten, twenty feet into the air as it was fueled by the blood and bodies of the dead fed into it in the last few minutes, roared up behind hi
m, silhouetting the Albino. His chalk-white flesh appeared even more pasty, and seemed to throb with the dark rot of death. The flesh-eater prepared to strike, but again Rock sensed it in the coiling of the man’s legs. The Doomsday Warrior thrust the pitchfork straight forward with a lightning-quick motion, stopping the Albino dead in his tracks. A strange expression came over his face, as if somehow he—the King of the Cannibals—was not supposed to die. Even in this world of mega-death, he had thought that he was different. The blood pouring from the three huge holes in his chest and heart spoke a different ending. The cannibal staggered backward, pulling himself somehow free of the weapon that had impaled him. But he stepped out of the pitchfork and into the fire. The wall of flames seemed to reach out with fiery fingers and grab him. Hands of yellow and red wrapped around his waist and legs in an instant. Tendrils of flame rushed round and round, zipping along his arms and neck. Then his mouth opened for one final scream that froze the rest of the cannibal tribe—those who had survived—in their tracks. The Albino’s white hair burst into a snapping fire and he was bald, then his lips browned and sizzled like white sausages. Within seconds the entire surface of his skin turned red, then brown, then black as the intense flames burned away relentlessly. The huge body crumpled, sending up a shower of sparks into the night sky as it slammed onto the white hot coals below.
The cannibals looked around them. Everywhere, their fellow scum lay in bloody stumps and puddles, pieces more than people. There were but five of them left—their leader dead. They fell to their knees, begging and crying for their lives.
“He made us to do it,” they bawled, kissing at Rock’s and Chen’s and Archer’s feet like slovenly slugs that lived beneath the lowest fallen logs.
Rockson looked down at them with something approaching pity in his narrowed eyes. Then his face hardened again. He reloaded his shotpistol as the five of them sent down a flood of tears that mixed with the blood of the dead in swirling pools.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly but firmly as he stood back from them. “But under Provision 13 of the Constitution of the Re-United States of America, by Presidential Order, cannibalism is a Capital Offense and all cannibals found by members of the United States Military are to be executed on sight. Do you have any last words?” Rockson asked, as Chen and Archer stepped away from the five blood-soaked savages, their eyes bloodshot and wild. “Any relatives to notify?”
“We didn’t eat no one, mister,” one of them screamed. “Just a few bites maybe.”
“The Albino—he made us eat the flesh,” a huge fat one cried out, blubbery tears rolling down his grease-matted purple beard.
“You look like you went for seconds,” the Doomsday Warrior said as he pulled the trigger on full auto.
Eight
Wyoming looked much as it might have a thousand years ago. Only two nukes had gone off in the state—and both at altitudes of five thousand feet, for maximum civilian death. The land seemed arid, the vegetation consisting of sagebrush and a thousand different species of cactus, which poked their mainly arrow-straight green, black, and red bodies up through the prairie’s surface. From bean stalks to cacti a good ten feet in diameter, they seemed to thrive here, every one of them defended to the hilt with spikes and quivers up to a yard long. The world was not a friendly place. Out here, where there was little to eat, the cacti’s heavy armaments were all that stopped them from being gobbled down for their food and moisture by the lizards and wild dogs that roamed the area, searching constantly for food—usually each other.
From his high vantage point atop his ’brid, Rock scanned the night ahead with a pair of Shecter Specials—Electronically Amplified Binoculars—held in both hands. Beneath him, Snorter continued at medium clip, knowing his master well enough to understand that the momentarily loose reins were not a signal to stop. They had their own codes worked out between them—everything from slap commands to whistle commands from a distance. The ’brid was as smart as a hunting dog, constantly amazing Rockson with its ability to absorb new information. It almost seemed to enjoy the process, as if it were curious to learn all that it could about the world and its human master.
Rock slowly turned the binoculars, searching the land ahead for signs of any kind of traps—laid by Russian or predator—or whatever the hell might be out there. In Post-Nuke America one wasn’t quite sure what to be looking for half the time. The sand might swallow things alive, pulsing with digestive fluids beneath the seemingly benign surface; the prettiest butterfly, so lazy and free on the breezes, could contain stingers with nerve poison that could kill a man in under twelve seconds. Nothing was what it appeared to be—everything was hungry. Rock let his intuition rather than his vision guide his search of the landscape. The eyes could be fooled, but the inner mind, with all the wisdom and magic of the unconscious at its bidding, could feel danger, could smell it as if it were a scent of blood on the air.
But Rockson felt nothing. Just more of the unending forest of cacti, with even more facing them ahead. It might get a little sticky, he realized, if the piercing plants got much closer together. But the members of the team all carried wafer-thin metallic sheets rolled like blankets under their saddlebags—capable of protecting them and their hybrids from both quills and stingers, as well as from the Acid Rains that sometimes fell. Rains of the purest, foulest black that could dissolve any living thing in seconds, burning its flesh to the very bone.
Suddenly from behind him, McCaughlin’s voice cried out, “Rock—something up there! Look!” Rockson let the binoculars fall to the ’brid’s neck and threw his head up, searching for the object of the Scotsman’s attention. There—he saw them. Parachutes, dozens of them, falling from an immense transport plane that roared from out of nowhere several thousand feet above. The skydivers began gliding down in wide circles, hanging on to their straps.
“Reds?” Chen asked as he rode up alongside Rockson.
“I don’t know who the hell else would be dropping men right in front of us—yet somehow it doesn’t seem like the Russian way. They’ve been using parakites—not chutes—for years. But we won’t take any chances.”
“Men!” Rockson yelled out, addressing the rest of the attack force, which rode up and came to a full stop around the commander. “Prepare defensive perimeters here—shield the ’brids. Chen, Detroit, Archer, McCaughlin—you come with me.” The Rock Team headed quickly across the prairie, narrowly skirting the cactus patches as their hybrid mounts raced toward the bodies falling from the sky. Rockson wanted to get there first—before the parachuters reached ground. In the air, they were as vulnerable as gliding birds. He pulled the field glasses to sight up just who it was and nearly did a doubletake, actually pulling back in the saddle. For a second wave of jumpers had followed the first. Only these weren’t men—they were camels. Loads of the frantically struggling beasts, attached to huge cloth harnesses that connected to three billowing parachutes above.
“Don’t fire yet,” Rock yelled back to the galloping team as the first of the human jumpers floated down just a few hundred yards away. “They’re not firing, so let’s not start it. I don’t think these are Russians—somehow I just don’t think so.” The Freefighters relaxed slightly as they realized that at least they weren’t in an immediate gun battle—though God knew what the next few minutes would bring. They watched the descending wall of humans, clad in khaki and wide-brimmed hats, and hundreds of yards above them, braying and kicking as if their lives depended upon it, thirty camels, their long strong necks bobbing up and down, twisting from side to side as they kept wishing they weren’t seeing what they were seeing—the ground coming up at them at an alarming speed.
The first of the humans to land stood up, undid his chute harness, and then took off his wide brimmed Ranger’s hat and waved it to Rockson and his men. Detroit and Rock looked at each other with strange expressions as they approached the still-falling invasion force.
Rock pulled the reins of the ’brid tighter as he got to within about ten yards of t
he hat-waving chutist.
“G’day, matey!” the red-cheeked hale and hearty-looking fellow yelled up to Rock with a wide smile. “This be America, hey? Or ’ave we landed somewhere out in the bloody bush?”
“Well, this is America, but—” Rockson began, but whatever question he was about to pose was cut off as all ears heard the sudden wrenching screams of one of the camels. They turned to see the first of the animal parachuters fall back-end first right on the top of a large cactus. The eight-hundred-pound camel threw its ugly head back and spat out the loudest, most pain-filled howl that Rock had ever heard. The entire weight of the struggling camel shook the eight-foot cactus from its very roots in the hard ground, and the whole package fell over—quills, green vegetable skin, and pungent camel hide all somehow blending together in a cloud of dust.
“Bloody dickens, it is,” the first chutist said, throwing his hat down in disgust on the ground. “All these camels are just a pack of drongo’s, no hoper’s matey.” Shaking his fist and yelling at the screaming camel and the rest of the braying creatures as they fell from the sky like big mean furry meteors, landing half on and half off the cacti, he rushed forward to help his men extricate them.
Rockson and his men couldn’t help but allow their faces to slowly relax from a state of fighting readiness into smiles at first, and then loud belly laughs.
“This is the one time in my life I can truly say I wish I had a camera,” Detroit chuckled. The sight of all those camels, kicking their skinny legs like temper-tantrum-throwing infants as they slammed into the ground or landed atop the pricking cacti, was indeed awesome. Nature had fortunately created the camel to withstand just about anything that its desert terrain had to offer, so their thick hides prevented them from receiving mortal internal injuries. Still, their mangy fur was soaked with blood from the many little stab wounds. The moment they were released from the torturous vegetation, the camels began running in circles, shaking their immense humped backs, snapping their flat-toothed jaws at their masters with loud chomping sounds. It took nearly ten minutes for the entire scene to boil itself down into coherence. But at last all the camels were tethered to a wide thorn tree, and those few men who had injured themselves were being treated and bandaged.