Doomsday Warrior 01 (45 page)

They looked at each other and then the four who had been picked to come glared at Ullman. “You entered us as factors in this ill-fated exploration,” Napr the Trigonometric said. They spoke in whispers as they watched the Freefighter fall slowly asleep beneath his dirt blanket. But as the night wore on and the plains air grew chillier and chillier they imitated their survivor mentor and shoveled handfuls of dirt onto their lower bodies. It was still quite warm. Amazing. Soon, they felt warm again, their shivering and shaking melted under the heat of the sun-soaked sands. They grinned at each other.

“Maybe this Rockson really does have some overriding factors in his equation,” Napr said to Ullman, who had covered himself in sand up to the neck and was staring with wonder at the flashing sky above. He had never really looked at it before.

The next morning they rose as the sun slowly edged up into the jagged pink sky. Rockson gave them each two sips of water from one of the canteens he had brought and they moved on. The terrain changed over the next few hours, growing lighter and lighter, until brownish grasses and small cactuses began appearing. The land grew rich quickly then and before they knew it they were walking through fields of brush and flowers, and small trees stood in cool groves, beckoning. The Technicians stared around in total fascination. The world outside wasn’t all black.

“Shh,” Rock suddenly said, putting his finger to his lips. “Now do what I do,” he whispered to the others. He dropped down on one knee. “You mustn’t let your prey see you. You must stay down wind of it too.”

“Down what?” Ullman asked. Rock explained.

“But what is it you see out there?” Ullman asked, scanning the land ahead of them. “I see nothing.”

“There!” Rock said, pointing. “By that thorned bush, about five hundred yards away. Just at the base. Some sort of small mammallike creature. Raccoon, maybe.” The others sighted through their pistols and found the animal. They whispered enthusiastically.

“Yes, I see it. Yes, there it is.” They were almost like children as they got into the game of hunting that Rockson was demonstrating.

“Your weapons are almost too powerful. We want to kill the game animal, not destroy it. Is there any way to set a pencil-thin beam without creating an implosion in the target?”

“Yes,” Ullman answered. “This power transformer switch on the base. It reduces the charge down to just its own energy. Works more like a laser, cutting through objects, but not creating the imploding reaction.”

“Good,” Rock said. He carefully knelt down and took the rifle in his arms, laying down flat on the dirt. He rested both elbows on the ground, after having opened the tripod on the front end of the barrel, and sighted along the long scope. The Technicians laid down alongside Rock, spaced about five feet apart and set their rifles like him. Rockson squeezed off a shot and the light beam shot through the air, leaving the barest trace of a sizzling sound as the molecules of oxygen and hydrogen in the air were vaporized. Rock took his finger off the trigger and the dark beam instantly disappeared.

“Let’s see!” Rockson said, jumping to his feet and moving at a half run to the animal he had aimed at. The Technicians followed along, racing on their much smaller legs. But they were catching the enthusiasm of the hunt and wanted to see if Rock had bagged the creature. He was the first to reach the dark, thorn-covered bush and reached down, proudly holding up some sort of half-skunk, half-raccoon creature, with thick, gray fur, black and white stripes and fangs the size of a Doberman’s. The shot had penetrated its chest and the sizzling fur released a small trickle of blood through the penny-sized hole.

“Excellent shot, Ted Rockson,” Ullman said, reaching over to touch the still-warm flesh of the downed game. Suddenly, he saw a whole new world opening up for the Technicians. Why, if they could go out on their own and be self-sufficient . . .

“I must try,” he said, gripping the gun and sighting slowly around at the thick vegetation and brush that filled the terrain ahead. He looked and looked, straining his eyes to catch sight of anything.

“Look for movement, for something—a branch moving against the wind. Let your instinct guide you,” Rock said. “You’ll see. It’s inside you all. The hunter, just let it come out.”

Ullman breathed out and tried to feel what Rockson was saying. He let the sight lazily drift amongst the small trees. There! He suddenly saw motion. Some sort of spotted deer creature. He sat down in the position Rock had shown and fired. He sighted quickly again. Damn, the thing was gone. He had missed.

“Let’s check it,” Rock said. They all rushed forward; this time the Technicians nearly kept up with Rockson on their thin legs. Ullman looked around the spot at which he had fired.

“Nothing,” he whispered.

“Oh no?” Rock said. “I guess this thing just died of natural causes while we were walking by.” Ullman walked over to where Rock stood. There, behind a rock, the creature lay, a bloody gash in its side. “You’ve got to go after them,” Rock said. “Often an animal won’t die immediately unless it’s a kill shot. They’ll run, anywhere from feet to miles. And that’s also when they’re at their meanest. That’s the other most important knowledge in hunting—tracking.” The deer animal, much smaller than twentieth century deer, with black spots randomly marking its brown hide, still twitched feebly, not quite dead. “Also, if an animal is still alive—don’t let it suffer.” He dialed the pistol to its pencil-beam setting and fired a shot through the mammal’s skull. It stopped moving instantly.

“Now, we can’t take this with us but we can . . .” He showed them how to gut the animal, bleed it and then hang it high in a tree branch to avoid the clutches of other predators. “We’ll get it on the way back. But in this way, you don’t have to carry extra meat with you. Multiply your possible kills on a single outing.” They headed off across the green and brown, slightly-more-hilly terrain, the other Technicians bagging a kill apiece, which they gutted and hung on their own, Rockson standing by but not helping.

They spent the night under the stars. This time, Rock showed them how to build a fire in the hills, to keep warm and keep nightly fanged visitors away. They stayed up until the moon had visited the sky and then gone home again, talking with Rockson about the world, about survival. Rockson knew that their very lives depended on learning these lessons well. And on becoming tough. They had to be a hundred times tougher than they were now.

The Technicians began to actually enjoy the harsh life. Their bodies ached, they could feel all their childhood fears surfacing as all beings must that have led a sheltered existence. But they also felt something new. The stirrings of pride, of manhood. They sat and talked and shared their common heritage with Rockson. Rock told them how Americans were working together to free the United States. Slowly, a warm friendship grew between Ullman and Rockson. Different as they were, they shared something in common—they were both leaders. Inside each man burned brighter than the average flame. Something pulsing, daring to reach up and out. Something that led man into new avenues, not just trampling the old.

As small as Ullman and the others were, Rock could see that they were growing—inside. They had been led down the wrong road. Now, the neurosis, the self-doubt of the entire race was wearing off—through the hardships of the real world. There was just one more lesson that Ullman must learn before the race could truly begin to change.

The next day they were on the hunt again. The land now was almost bountiful. They had come nearly forty miles from the silos and marched through rounded hills covered with a dark orange grass and low, purple bushes covered with long, prickly thorns. Animal life was plentiful, even birds could be heard calling from time to time. The Technicians were in awe. They had never seen so much life before.

“It is amazing, Rockson,” Ullman said, walking in step alongside the American Freefighter. “We honestly believed that the entire world had been made black. But to see so much life, I—” They were just stepping into a grove of trees when a shape dashed from within and, with one swipe of its immense paw, slashed one of the Technicians, Napr, into a bloody corpse. He fell to the dirt, throat severed, blood pouring out across his small body. The predator, as large as a tiger but black, black as coal with one large white spot on each side, grabbed Napr by the neck and lifted him as if he were a doll, immediately running off into the woods.

The others hadn’t had time to respond. Even Rock had just raised his pistol when the three hundred-pound monster was gone. The other Technicians stared after the fleeing beast with shock on their thin mouths. “It got Napr. It killed Napr,” they mumbled over and over. Even Ullman seemed to have gone catatonic.

“Snap out of it,” Rock yelled, ripping them from their stupor. “This is the reality of life out here. There are many things that will try to kill you, eat you. It’s not a question of just going out with your beams and gathering dinner as if you were in what the ancients called a supermarket. If you hunt, others will hunt you. That is the way. You must be prepared at all times to kill or die.” Ullman straightened up at the words.

“Yes, you are right, Ted Rockson. We cannot fall into the old ways of self-pity. We must become fighters. I am going to get it!” He marched forward with his pistol held hip-high, not even looking back to see if the others were following. Rock moved closely behind, then the others, following in back of him, huddled together, searching the terrain—the trees and bushes, with their terror-stricken eyes, waiting for the next attack.

With Ullman in the lead they walked through thickening woods for an hour, following the blood drops from Napr’s body. The bark on the trees grew thick and turned almost reddish, the ground became covered with some sort of toadstool fungus, as big as pumpkins and twisted into gnarled black and brown shapes.

“Here,” Ullman said, kneeling down to look closer at flecks of blood on some five-pointed leaves. Rock watched approvingly. Someone was learning something. With his own Particle Beam pistol at the ready, Rockson let Ullman continue. There was only one way to become a man. The hard way. Ullman pushed the bushes ahead of him carefully aside, walking as quietly as he could. Somehow, his ancient instincts, instincts of hunting and stalking that were buried in his memory cells from tens of thousands of years earlier, were opening up, giving him an internal knowledge that he didn’t know he had.

They heard low ripping and growling sounds. Ullman walked forward toward the sound, and stepped into a clearing surrounded by rotting logs. There it was. The black-furred cat, its ivory-white fangs tearing into Napr’s guts. Its black face was red with the blood of the prey. The victim’s entire throat, chest and stomach had been torn out and eaten. Ullman felt sick to his stomach for a moment and instantly realized that he had seconds to live. He raised the pistol just as the beast, its red eyes wide as suns, jumped up and rushed toward him. He aimed the pistol in his trembling hands as the carnivore bared its dripping fangs and, growling loudly, advanced in a direct line toward Ullman. His hands froze. He felt his muscles stiffen with fear. The creature had already killed Napr—how could
he
stop it? He was not brave. Why didn’t Rockson kill it? He looked around quickly but somehow Rockson wasn’t there. The creature speeded up, snarling, its big body breaking into a run. It reared back on its powerful haunches and leaped from twelve feet away. Ullman saw its front claws reaching—reaching for him. Somehow, without even quite realizing it, he raised his beam pistol and fired. A medium energy ray of black death hit the killer’s chest. The scream of the huge cat was the only sound that filled the clearing. It fell to the earth, dead. Smoke sizzled from the two-inch hole that neatly pierced its body. Its big eyes were wide open, staring up at Ullman who stood only feet away.

Trembling, the Technician leader let the pistol fall to his side. He stood there in a daze. He had killed it. He, Ullman, had destroyed the monster.

“Good shot,” Rock said, walking around in front of the Technician leader. He stared at the dead cat.

“Rockson, where were you? I almost was negated by the creature!”

“Almost,” Rockson replied. “I was right behind you, Ullman. I couldn’t shoot it. You had to. So you could learn something about yourself. That you are strong. That you have power. Now you are a man.”

Ullman heard the words strangely in his mind. He said them silently in the back of his throat, where all silent discourse takes place.

A man! He was a man! The words sounded unfamiliar. But powerful. He
was
a man. A man who had dominance over the beasts, over his environment. The Technicians had thought themselves weaklings—so they were. But now Ullman saw them, saw himself as something different—something to be reckoned with. A thrill of pride rippled along the small man’s backbone. The others would be in awe of him now, as they had been of Vorn. Of the hunter. But he would not let himself be the only one. It was as Rockson said, they all must learn to become powerful. They must all become
men
.

“I thank you, Ted Rockson,” Ullman said, bending down and touching the claws of the fallen man-eater. “Suddenly I begin to understand you. You are a far deeper and wiser man than I had realized.”

“No, Ullman, I was you when I was a young man. I know what you are going through—the tests of courage and cowardice that each man must experience and pass or fail in life. I know that you and all your people have it in you—it’s just been suppressed for so long, while you worked in your subterranean machine shops. It is good to create and build inventions for mankind, but you must live
in
the world.”

“Yes, Rockson, you are accurate,” Ullman said, nodding his bald head. “Courage = death challenge divided by depth of experience x constant .3278885.”

Rock grinned. “Something like that.” They found a large pole to carry the man-eater on and tied it up so that it hung upside-down. Two of the Technicians took turns at the back while Rockson held up the front of the beast. Slowly, they headed back to the silos with their prize catch. And more. A changed Ullman. A man who would really be able to lead his people for the first time.