Doomsday Warrior 01 (43 page)

He looked over the slaughter. They’d been killed by bullets and what looked like grenades, judging by the amputations that lay around the dark ground in their own little display backdrops of blood. And . . . what was that? Killov bent down and picked up a sharp, five-pointed throwing device. One of Chen’s that had failed to detonate. It had stuck halfway through the throat of a Red lieutenant, whose hands were still around his throat in a frozen grip of death. What the hell was it? Killov wondered. He had never seen the bandits use this sort of weapon. Could there be armed tribes far out in these unknown regions who are beginning to attack? Was there more to the picture than he had realized? That was the one thing the Russian KGB leader hated, not knowing.

He walked among the rotting bodies, looking at the wounds on each, poking around the dirt under the bodies, looking for he knew not what. Around him, his officers, nearly twenty-five of them, scouted around the black dirt, following the lead of their commander. They too had no idea what they were searching for, but imitated Killov. The colonel spent an hour walking around the field, examining every thing, every bloodstain, every splattered gut, every shell casing for a clue. At last Killov walked across the dirt to where the bandits had made their defense. It still seemed incredible. More than forty of the KGB’s top men wiped out by what couldn’t have been more than a small force. He walked around the dead hybrids, holding his nose from the stench of the swollen, decomposing animals, their guts already strewn like moldering garbage from their bloated stomachs. He again examined the shell casings, the empty boxes of ammo. It was the Freefighters, he was suddenly sure of it. He had seen too many of these defensive encampments in the past not to recognize one now. Blood here too. Some of their men had been hit, he thought with at least a little satisfaction. And possibly killed as well. The bandits never left their dead.

“Sir, over here,” one of Killov’s officers yelled out. The colonel quickly walked over to the man who was kneeling down next to one of the dead mutant horses. “A locket of some kind.” The officer stood up, handing Killov a small, gold pocket watch on the end of a long, brass chain. The colonel flicked the little dial on the top and the front piece popped open. Inside was a watch, still ticking, and on the inside of the shiny cover was the inscription, “To my darling Peter Slade. May he be the best doctor Century City ever had.”

“Century City, I’ve heard that name before,” Killov said out loud to Petrovsky and Vorshnev, two of his top officers.

“Yes, sir,” the gaunt-faced Vorshnev replied, nearly a carbon copy of Killov himself, with eyes as cold as an arctic glacier. “The name has been linked by our analysis computers as being the most probable base of operations of Ted Rockson.”

Killov’s eyes lit up like an exploding phosphorous bomb. “Rockson, what the hell would he be doing all the way out here? Something’s going on and I want to find out what.” The KGB leader strode back to his chopper in long, angry steps, yelling all the while to his note-taking underlings around him. “I want this whole area, from this point all the way back to the Rockies to be filled with drones. I want four Special Squads made ready for this mission only, to be on full alert at all times until I take them off. Two parakite teams and two helicopter assault squads. He’s going to have to come back this way sometime, whatever the hell he’s doing out there,” Killov said, looking out into the black wasteland which stretched off to the horizon. The chopper took off, again raising a tornado of soot. “And when he does, we’ll be ready for him.”

Thirty-Eight

T
he next morning Rockson greeted Ullman, the first Technician to awaken. “You ate your fill last night,” Rock said, “That’s for sure.”

“Hunger = emptiness x caloric needs divided by time lapse since last sustenance.” Rock grinned back, somehow deciphering the message. “We haven’t eaten like that since Vorn dragged back an entire elk-type creature nearly three hundred day cycles ago. That was before he began losing his strength. At the end he was capable of carrying only small game—rabbits, several birds. We are not big, Ted Rockson, I know, but we have lost nearly thirty percent of our body mass in the last year. You see us at our lowest bodyfat-to-muscle ratio.”

“McCaughlin, up and at ’em,” Rockson yelled over to the grumbling Scotsman who turned uncomfortably on the hard concrete floor of the cavernous silo complex. Slowly, he began rousing himself, scratching his red beard, cursing his joints which felt like hell warmed over after a night on this extra-firm rock mattress.

“But, Rockson, you must relay your information about the world to me. Our conversation last night was terminated by my descent into biological satiation. What is it like out there?” Ullman’s black eyes glimmered, a dull golden streak in the middle like a light at the end of a long tunnel. His face seemed much pinker after the feast of the previous evening.

“It’s beautiful, and ugly, out there, Ullman,” Rock said, sitting in one of the old wooden chairs that men of the missile crews must have used in the twentieth century. “Parts of America are lush and green but much of it is still terribly damaged. But this is the worst, by far, that we’ve seen. You’d be wise to leave this area.”

“Leave?” Ullman snorted. “We’ve lived the past five generations here. This is our entire world. It is too late for that, I’m afraid. But tell me, Ted Rockson, where do you and your people live? Are there more like you?”

“We’re the Freefighters of the hidden cities,” Rock said, his nostrils flaring at the sudden scent of the eggs and boar bacon breakfast that McCaughlin and Erickson were preparing nearby on the small autostoves. Rock continued as the leader of the Technicians listened, fascinated. “The Reds invaded right after their first strike, sending in millions of troops. And now.” Rock looked down at the flat, gray floor. He hated to say the words. “And now, they rule America from their fortress cities.”

“The Russians are here? In America?” Ullman seemed genuinely surprised and disturbed. “We had known, of course, from records that our original ancestors kept, of the attack. Then all the missiles here were launched and the entire base was sealed up tight as a tomb. The original Technicians had tons of food and oxygen down here. When the bombs went off all over this area, they were untouched. They didn’t come up for nearly five years—and then, seeing the blackened condition of the land, submerged again and began working on their own pure science. Doing what they knew best.

“We’ve caught transmissions from time to time but always garbled. The radiation in the surrounding environment inhibits the transmission of nearly all frequencies of radio or television.”

“Well, they are out there. The Reds still have armies of men here and they think they run things. But times are changing, Ullman. We undertook this journey to find out more about these Black Beam weapons of yours. Such devices could make us superior to the Reds’ armor and their field artillery.”

“Ted Rockson, all that is ours shall be yours. I—we—are all Americans. We have kept working decade after decade, developing weapons and medical equipment from our discoveries, in several fields of research. We have kept the machinery, the laboratories functional here, made as many devices as we could, preparing for the day when we would be called on. For what purpose we have never known for sure. But now, it becomes clear. We developed our technology for the day when you arrived. And now our function can be fulfilled. Yes! Yes!” Ullman grew more and more excited, his big eyes nearly bulging out of the egg-shaped head. He and his people had been so empty, both nutritionally and spiritually for so long. Now there was meaning again. That was the deepest hunger of all.

The other Technicians awoke and were again fed huge, steaming portions of good American food. They took to it like beavers to trees and seemed to want to eat more and more, as if they would start growing before the Freefighters’ eyes. Already their pale, thin stalks of arms seemed to be filling out, their walk was steadier, their beads held higher.

“You mentioned medical equipment,” Rock said, looking at Ullman. “Two of my men were recently hurt and aren’t responding well to our treatment. What sort of medical devices are you equipped with?”

“Well, a side discovery, quite accidental, of the Particle Beam was made by one of my illustrious ancestors, Drior the Quantuum Mechanic. He noticed that cultures of bacteria placed under an extremely low level Particle Accelerator destroyed said culture in under twenty seconds. Much experimentation with this fact led to the development of what we call the Neutron Accelerator and Micro-Biological Extermination Unit. The MB, for abbreviation. It destroys all bacteria and viruses within an organism without harming the organism itself.”

Rock looked at Ullman intently. “Do you mean the thing destroys all germs?”

“Yes, I guess you could enumerate that,” Ullman replied. Rockson whistled.

“Then you never get sick?”

“No, never. We are given a dose of the ray once a year and none of us ever contracts sickness. But for genetic reasons our lifespan seems to be quite short. Few of us live over the age of forty-five, dying as if by command of some preprogrammed force. We know when we will die weeks ahead.”

“Can we use it on my injured men?” Rockson asked.

“Come,” Ullman said, jumping down from the chair he was sitting in. Rockson had several of the Freefighters help him carry Perkins and Lang up the two levels of ladder and into the medical section of the Technician research laboratories. Perkins was looking worse all the time, his breath coming in quick little gasps, his eyes hardly open. They had had to feed him by hand for two days. Lang acted in good spirits but his entire leg had turned bright purple and was threatening to evolve into gangrene. Ullman gave directions to the Freefighters in how to use the equipment. Both men were strapped down on long tables and three cylindrical, cone-shaped objects were placed over each of the bodies. Ullman told the Americans to step back behind the shielding at one end of the apparatus-cluttered medical chamber. He turned numerous dials on a large control board, clicked a Power On button and waited a moment for the black crystal diodes inside the cones to warm up.

“Just lay there and don’t move,” Ullman yelled to the two fully conscious Americans who lay flat on their backs in the center of the room on two high, plastic meditables. “It won’t hurt. You’ll just see a little bit of light, feel a hum go through your body and maybe a little bit of heat. But my people and I go through this each year on our birthdates.”

“Go to it,” both Americans said vigorously. Ullman pressed the Activation switch and the Americans were bathed in a shimmering black light. It seemed to dance across their bodies before entering them. The rays lasted for twenty seconds and then Ullman pressed the Disengage switch and turned the rest of the machinery off. The two wounded Freefighters were helped to their feet.

“Can’t say I feel much better,” Perkins said, smiling with the slightest lift of his pale lips.

“No, it’s not an anesthetic,” Ullman said. “Your pain will be with you for a little while longer anyway. But all the bacteria inside you that were causing the infections are dead. Now your own body can heal itself.” The other Freefighters helped the two somewhat-skeptical Americans back down the long rung ladder to the floor they were camped on.

After the men were set back to rest, Ullman came to Rock’s side. “Come with me, Rockson, and bring whoever you deem technologically comprehensive in relation to weapons mathematics,” Ullman said. Rock called for Green and Slade to accompany him.

“You men, straighten up around here, will you?” Rock yelled out to the others. The campsite was already looking filthy, littered with broken chairs that had collapsed under the Freefighters’ weight and plates of uneaten food from the previous night’s pig bash.

Ullman took the three Freefighters through long, winding corridors and down two levels by the ladders. They entered a large assembly plant, filled with machine tools, torches and plastic molding presses, all the equipment of what looked like an ultra-modern factory, covering the floors of the parking-lotsized weapons plant.

“This is where my people spent most of their lives over the last eighty years,” Ullman said, leading Rockson to a pile of what were clearly weapons, stacked neatly on steel racks along one of the center walls. “The correct enumeration is actually Particle Beam Dispersal Disintegrator,” Ullman said, lifting one of the plastic pistols. It was much like the one Brady had brought back to Century City only this model seemed slightly longer and narrower and came equipped with a long, green lens scope on top.

“The technology is simple, really, once you understand it,” Ullman said, handing the weapon to Rockson. “A question of Energy = Mass x atomic disintegration factor x constant .99998812 + the energy charge of the weapon squared. In this case the energy charge is solar-collected and battery-stored in the handle of the weapon. One charging of two hours’ duration will power the pistol for approximately one thousand firings.”

“And the capability of the weapons?” Rock asked.

“Of the small pistols like this, a range of about one hundred yards,” Ullman said, lifting another one and handing it to Detroit. “It can be kept in a tight beam, approximately one half inch in diameter, with the destructive force of D = Energy x mass x charge acceleration. One of these pistols would destroy any object with a steel-type density up to two tons. It actually knocks out the neutron/proton balance within the individual atoms and causes the solidity to implode.”

“And these?” Rock asked, lifting a much longer, rifle-sized weapon. Again, smooth, made from some sort of shiny black plastic with fibers of green embedded in it. It seemed absolutely impervious to scratches or damage of any kind just by the hardness of the material. Yet it was as light as a feather, as it would have to be for the Technicians to be able to lift it.

“These are the most powerful of the Particle Beam weaponry except for two much larger ones over there, which have the destructive capability of small atomic bombs.” The Freefighters glanced over at two cannon-sized weapons a good ten feet long.