by Ryder Stacy
The guards in their haste had forgotten that they were firing through a highly charged metal fence. Some of their slugs made it through the openings—but many didn’t. They ripped through the steel mesh, setting off mini-explosions of electrical discharge. The sparks and the white-hot glowing metal of the fence flew right back toward the Russian jeep, searing the faces and uniforms of the troops inside. As the men screamed in pain, trying to stamp out the little flames all over their bodies, a large star-shaped piece of red-hot fence steel landed in the cartridge-belt feed of the .50mm. Within seconds, the whole crate went up like the Fourth of July—and then the gas tank from below, sending the jeep and its occupants on a quick fiery ride to hell.
Rockson turned back from the edge of some woods a quarter of a mile off and saw the immolated jeep. This particular batch of Reds wasn’t going to get him. Not tonight. He found his ’brid tied up another few hundred yards off and took off at full speed the moment he mounted it, not wanting to wait around while the Reds sent out a whole armada of searchlight-carrying choppers to find and destroy one man. But again, Rock circumnavigated the trouble spots, heading to the west, nearly five miles out of his way—but also completely out of the main search zones that the Russians would be concentrating on. He thanked God for their unchanging bureaucratic tactics. After one hundred years of occupying America, they still hadn’t figured out how to effectively fight a guerilla war—preferring the old methods of just sending out vast numbers of men and heavy artillery and laying waste to whole sections of the country. As long as they kept fighting like that, the Freefighters were safe.
It took the Doomsday Warrior nearly three hours of hard riding to get back to the hidden encampment inside a nearly inaccessible valley bordered by two steep mountains. The moment he dismounted he called for a meeting of the entire Aussie and American force. Within minutes they had formed a circle on the ground around him.
“Now, I know this is going to sound crazy,” Rockson began, each eye fixed on him, “but I had a plan sprout in my brain on the way back here.”
“And what might that bloody be?” Lieutenant Boyd piped up sitting among his men. Rockson gulped, knowing this might well be the hardest sell he would ever make.
“Well, let me ask you a question,” he said, turning toward the Aussie commander. “These boomerangs of yours . . . couldn’t they also—theoretically of course—couldn’t they guide, say, a creature like those overgrown octopi—make them do things?”
“If you’re talkin’ about making ’em carry your bedding and food—forget it, chum. If you’re talkin’ about just heading ’em a certain direction—that’s about the limit, at least at this point, of what we can do.”
“Exactly, exactly,” Rockson smiled, growing excited. “Guiding them—guiding them right into the walls of Fort Svetlanya.”
“The bloody what of what?” Boyd spoke up, not quite sure he was hearing the concept correctly.
“You say you can direct them like sheep, right? So these are sheep—and we’re guiding them into a corral—the fort. So they happen to be a thousand times bigger and meaner than sheep. But it all works just the same. We could send those monsters through the western wall, and in the chaos created pluck the President and Kim right out of Red hands.” Rock glanced around at them all with a slightly pleading look in his eyes. Now that the Reds had been attacked, they would be on full alert. The Freefighters would never be able to bluff their way in as the original plan had intended.
Boyd conferred privately with his men for a minute. Then he turned back to Rockson.
“We’ll give it a bloomin’ try,” the Aussie grinned. “But you realize we’re talking about trying to control these thingos for nearly twenty miles. If anything—and I mean anything—goes wrong, we’re all dead men. It would take only seconds for one of those tentacles to take us all out.”
“Pal, everything is trying to take us out all the time—the trick is to get it before it gets you.” The plan was carefully worked out with Rockson giving instructions from his reconnaissance of the fort of exactly where the octopi should be guided. Boyd and his men went over the crude maps Rock drew for them, making sure they understood every bit of it. There was no room for error—not when you’re controlling something bigger than a whale and with teeth like a dinosaur.
The Aussies sacrificed one of their boomerangs, turning on the screaming siren and dropping it straight down into the chasm from which the octopi had emerged. They mounted their camels, outfitting them with semi-blinders and ear pads so the creatures wouldn’t go berserk. Then they waited. It didn’t take long. One, another, then more tentacles than they could count came wriggling over the top. Within thirty seconds there were twelve of the gargantuan creatures, their three-story-high heads appearing out of the darkness like icebergs rising from an ocean. The twelve underground mutations pulled themselves out of the earthquake-created shaftway and ran in the direction opposite that in which the boomers were flying, shrieking bloody murder. Twelve mountains moved by nothing but sound waves.
The Aussies followed along, split up on each side of the line of fleeing octapoids, keeping pace atop their camels. In synchronized fashion, they each threw their boomers in a particular orbit so that they came to within just yards of the terrified mutations and kept them on track. Now that the creatures had hit their full stride, tentacles moving ceaselessly, they reached a speed of nearly twenty-five miles an hour. It was as if the very clouds had descended from the skies and were marching across the land, blotting out the daylight, crushing, toppling any and every thing in their path.
Rockson watched and whistled through his teeth. The damned thing was working. It was impossible, but . . . The Freefighters mounted and took off after the bizarre parade just disappearing over a sandy rise. By plan, they would stay a good quarter of a mile behind the proceedings so the Australians could keep total control over their flock—and have some room to maneuver in case one of them broke free from the pack. The Doomsday Warrior couldn’t help but think about man’s mastery over the beast. How human intelligence gave him dominance over even the largest of monstrosities. Never had mankind’s preeminence at the top of the evolutionary scale been so starkly outlined for the Doomsday Warrior. Perhaps in some fashion—using the Australian concepts of sound control—the beasts, the mutations of America, could become part of the fighting forces that would ultimately throw the Red bear back into his den across the sea. He made a mental note to talk to Dr. Shecter about it back at Century City—perhaps the Aussies could spare one of their boomers for study. Then he caught himself—planning for the future when the present hadn’t yet unraveled its unknowable outcome. There was a long way to go—and a million things that could go wrong.
But the Australians seemed in full control. They herded the pack of octopi like so many sheep, staying just out of the way of the thrashing tentacles, which aside from propelling the mutations across the hard-packed sand occasionally lashed out, trying to grab one of them. Fortunately, the dim-witted octopi, whose brains were hardly larger than those of cows, were unable to link up the fact that it was the small pink creatures riding just out of range who were the ones responsible, for the deafening sounds. Instead they fled in pain, trying to do nothing more than get away—which, try as the might, they were unable to accomplish.
The parade hurtled across the prairie as the sun slowly sank like a burning ship on the horizon and at last dropped from sight. The evening sky filled with the magnetic storms that sometimes raged high above the earth in kaleidoscopic patterns, filling the heavens with constantly shifting rainbows of luminescent color. And far beneath these waves of deadly beauty, the twelve largest creatures that had ever walked on the face of the earth moved through the darkness like apparitions from hell itself, here to deliver a message of doom.
The Captain of the Guard of Fort Svetlanya walked stiffly along the high walkways that ran along the top of the fortifications of the military sector. A fort within a fort, in case even their own slaves should eve
r revolt. The fifty-foot concrete walls were higher than the thirty-foot-high front and side walls that surrounded the southern, eastern, and western portions of the entire fortress, enabling him to see out over the plains. He strode as straight as a ruler, his shoulders held high, his chest bedecked with the many ribbons he had received during his ten years of duty here in the wastelands of America. He carried a checklist on a clipboard, and as he passed each machine-gun emplacement and artillery unit he checked off that all was as it should be. Although they hadn’t been attacked for nearly fifty years, out here in the wilds the fort was always on the highest security—every gun tower manned twenty-four hours a day. Still, it was hard not to fall asleep on post, as nothing ever stirred out there on the dark plains except the occasional horned owl flapping its thick wings in search of lizard meat or the flocks of bats that screeched out their sonic radar as they cruised by in the hundreds.
The captain stopped as he came to the main batteries—ten .200mm cannons aimed at strategic points on the prairie below. They stood side by side thirty feet apart, their immense muzzles extending beyond the fortress as if reaching forward, burning with the need to fire. The captain ran his hands a few times against the cold steel of one. The rebels were up to something—they had murdered four Russians yesterday.
“Let them try,” he whispered to the monstrous steel tube with a smug smile. “Let them come against weapons like you. Let them fight like men—not rats darting from the darkness. Then we shall see who lives and who dies.”
As if in response to his desires, the Russian officer suddenly heard a distant sound—a chorus of shrill notes bending and changing constantly. He rushed past the firing chair of the .200mm and up to the five-foot-high wall that covered the ramparts. Something—something miles off and dim. He could barely make it out. Just shapes at first—and then, as they slowly edged closer, he saw that the shapes were huge. He reached over and grabbed the binoculars from the neck of a subordinate officer, ripping the strap in half, and quickly focused on the mountainous shadows. Only they weren’t shadows he saw, as the blood drained from his face. They were . . . they were . . .
“Man the cannons!” he screamed out with such violence that the Red soldiers around him jerked back in shock. “Full-scale attack. Every man to his post—fire at will—but fire!” He pressed a wide red button on the wall, setting off bells throughout the fortress. The gunners ran to their posts, jumping into the huge steel seats built into the backs of the cannon, each unit mounted on an immense swivel, giving it a thirty-degree range of fire from side to side. It took two men to carry one of the yard-long 150-pound shells and load it in. All the computerized loading systems the Reds had brought over had seemed to begin malfunctioning the moment they set foot in America. Even the radioactive rays coming from the ground seemed to want to help the American Freefighters by disrupting Russian technology. The gunners turned large geared wheels to the side of them, swiveling the twenty-foot-long barrels until they locked onto their targets far below. But when they pushed the autofocus on their sighting systems, and saw the monstrosities, the spit dried up in their mouths and their hearts slammed against their chests as if trying to escape—like rats from a ship.
Somehow trembling fingers locked their targets into place and pushed firing buttons. The great muzzles exploded out blue fire all along the ramparts at the front of Fort Svetlanya. Missile-sized shells streaked through the dark purple night like comets blazing a red trail as they searched out their kills. All twelve of the high-explosive packages of steel slammed into the front ranks that were advancing on them.
They went off with thunderous roars, sending up mini-volcanos of swirling dust and shredded cactus. The Captain of the Guard looked anxiously through his glasses, his narrow tongue trying to lick moisture back onto his cracking lips. There—he could see—the dust settling, and—
They were coming! The barrage hadn’t done a thing, and in a swath of light cast by the low-rising moon, he could suddenly see the things more clearly. He wished he hadn’t. The long, suckered tentacles reached toward his glasses like arms from the grave and he felt a series of shivers ripple up and down his spine. It was death—death incarnate—and it was stalking him.
“Fire!” he screamed again, running up and down the walkway. “Faster, fire faster! Blow them up!” The shell carriers ran back and forth, loading the cannons again and again, their muscles bulging from their efforts, their stripped-to-the-waist bodies covered with a thick sheen of fear-scented sweat. But though the shells landed dead center of them the creatures just kept emerging from the clouds of fire and smoke, not slowing an inch. Their porous bodies shook from the shock waves of the blasts, but their terror of the constantly screaming siren-equipped boomerangs was more powerful than their fear of the shells—and so they kept rushing forward, looming upon the fortress.
Suddenly they were there—the immense gray appendages reaching up toward the walls. The Captain of the Guard stood back, barely able to control his motor functions. In the midst of his fear, he clung to the hope that the walls would stop them. Nearly a yard thickness of reinforced concrete—yes, the megapoids would never break through. He regained control of himself long enough to start for the stairs when he heard a slurping sound behind him. He turned just in time to see the first twenty feet of one of the undulating tentacles slap over the top of the thick wall. Just in time to see it descend upon him, one of the sticky slime-coated suckers slamming over his body. He screamed but no one heard. The others were already running for their lives, the hot cannons abandoned like so much useless junk. The tentacle pulled back, taking the captain for a wild ride through the air, held as if he were glued to the tip of the snake-like limb. Then it lowered the captain down to the big head below to see what it had snagged. The tentacle whipped the Russian right in front of the octopus’s barn door of an eye, and the thing squinted for a moment, making sure that its catch was edible. It decided it was and jerked the squirming prey down underneath the bulbous head. The Captain of the Guard tried to scream again as he saw the gnashing rows of endless teeth, curved and long and glistening with dark brown digestive fluids. But he couldn’t. His body was in such terror that neither his lips nor tongue could move. The tentacle raised up and the teeth moved suddenly at super speed, like a sewing machine. The captain’s legs were the first in and he felt them ground up instantly into a bloody hamburger. Then his stomach and chest were pulled into the thousand-toothed mouth of the mutation, and he was turned into Homo Sapiens pâté in a hundredth of a second. He didn’t even lose consciousness until his skull entered the slurping blood-spattered jaws. The last thing the Russian officer saw was a dagger-like black tooth coming right toward him. It ripped into his eye and then the brain itself. What had been Captain Ygor Ivanovitch of the Russian Army slid down the throat of the land-roving octopus in a bloody stream of hot red stew.
Whatever hopes the rest of the Red soldiers had that the walls would stop the demonic forces attacking them were quickly shattered. Shattered as easily as the walls themselves, which fell beneath the ripping tentacles. The octopi came right up to the fort guided on each side by the unyielding curtains of piercing sound. The hundred-foot-long tentacles grabbed hold of the top and pulled. And the walls came tumbling down. It was like a child angrily destroying the toy town he has just built—kicking and smashing it to pieces. Within seconds, the monstrosities had pulled out the entire front wall for a distance of nearly two hundred yards. It was difficult for the Aussies on the left flank to keep up with the rampaging monsters once they entered the fortress—but they had to. The prison building was on the western side, so the boomerangs flew along that flank of the advancing octopi, guiding them toward the other half of the city. Once properly guided, the Australian force at last let their boomerangs shoot back to their hands.
They watched the dozen nightmares head off toward the center of the city, leaving behind a trail of utter death and destruction. Everything they passed over was leveled. Every man they saw running in terr
or was grabbed up and gobbled down in a flash. What had been set in motion was unstoppable.
Rockson and his men came storming in on their ’brids, which jumped through the rubble that just seconds before had been towering walls. They rode with rifles and pistols in hand, but there was no one to fight—not where the octapoids had been. Not even the remains of men. They joined up with the Aussie force waiting just inside and headed down the side streets together, toward the main prison. The hooves of the hybrids and the camels clattered noisily down the stone streets as Lieutenant Boyd rode up alongside Rockson.
“Between your mad plan and our Aborigine weapons, I dare say it looks like we’ve done a little bit of urban renewal here,” the Aussie said, still holding the weapon in his right hand, its siren deactivated.
“I’ll order a crateful,” Rock yelled out above the pounding of their mounts’ hooves. “Make that a hundred crates.” They tore through the city at full speed as alarms and explosions continued to go off to the right. Smoke began filling the far side of the fortress as myriad fires broke out from severed gas lines and demolished munitions depots. On their own now, the army of octopi seemed to know just what to do. They had found the biggest feeding hall they had ever known and weren’t about to leave.
The Freefighters came to the wide thoroughfare just in front of the prison guards who were waiting behind sandbags, nervously fingering their Kalashnikovs. They had no idea what was going on in other parts of Fort Svetlanya—and from the sound of it, they didn’t want to know. When they saw the motley collection of hybrid horses and camels riding in, it was almost a relief. Almost, but not quite—unless being dead is a relief. For as the two machine-gun emplacements sighted up on the front ranks of the mounted fighters, they didn’t notice Detroit’s two mini-globes soar forward, arcing high into the air and then coming down again. Before they could fire a bullet there were two small explosions and the sandbagged positions filled with smoke as bodies flew every which way out of them.