Doomsday Warrior 07 - American Defiance (19 page)

“Yes sir,” thirty-six voices answered as one.

“And bloody bon voyage to one and all,” Boyd added, breaking the mood of imminent battle for a moment.

The whistle of the train sounded again, much closer this time, and the fighters and the beasts beneath them shifted nervously. Even the animals knew a fight was coming. They had been through too many of them not to be aware—by their masters’ motions and heavy breathing—that something was in the wind. But fighting was as much a part of their lives as those of the warriors who rode them. They had known battle since they could be ridden—and they now faced death with the aplomb of any hardened veteran.

Suddenly there was a screeching of steel against steel as the great wheels of the train began rounding the long curve beside which the Freefighters waited. None of them had even seen one of the monstrous vehicles in motion before—just black and white photographs from magazines and books of long ago. They watched with some trepidation as the Silver Bullet began its grinding turn. It was huge, thousands of tons of thick steel—and seemed impenetrable to the men who were about to attack it. And yet they couldn’t help but admire its beauty, its sheer force and elemental power. It was from another age—an age of sleek lines and dining cars and lively dinner parties—an age of scenic travel looking out wide picture windows at the postcard-pretty farms and countryside as they flew by. And yet here it was, pulling by right in front of them—an anachronism in an atomic age.

The engine screamed below Rock’s eyes just yards away. The Silver Bullet—he saw why they called it that, for the locomotive that pulled the fifteen-car train was as sleek and silver as a bullet. A bullet seventy-five feet long and as high as a two-story building. Smoke poured from its wide chimney as the thick steel gears turned like a machine in a factory, pushing the driving wheels. For a split second, Rockson saw the pink flash of the engineer’s face sitting high, eyes intent on the tracks ahead. The man they had to get—or face total destruction.

“Go, go, go!” Rock yelled, kicking his ’brid in the sides so it knew he meant business. The hybrid leaped from its tree-hidden perch right down onto the side of the grading, and within a misstep, took up pursuit of the train. The other hybrids and camels gulped their animal throats and jumped after their braver brethren in a stampede of hooves. Rock took up pursuit. Their timing had to be impeccable. Letting the train go by so the engineer wouldn’t be able to send warning—but not so late that they couldn’t catch up with the damned thing. Riding right alongside the engine, it seemed even larger than before. It towered over him, a screaming, mountain-sized steel dragon that Rock knew had hidden teeth to match. The train slowed to 20 mph as it rounded the sharpest part of the curve and Rockson made his move, flipping the reins back and forth on the hybrid’s shoulders, making it shoot forward like a cheetah in pursuit of its prey. He hugged the galloping animal’s neck, pulling himself low to break the wind, and whipped his shotpistol from its holster. Slowly, slowly they gained, but there was barely any time left—Rock knew that the tracks straightened out in less than a mile, and the Silver Bullet would quickly reach 60 to 80 mph once it opened up.

The Doomsday Warrior glanced behind him and saw the rest of the team close on his heels. Already Chen and Detroit were preparing to leap from their mounts onto the back of the second car—the Communications Car—which would have to be put out of business within seconds, before the operators inside had the chance to send even a partial distress call. He looked forward again just as Snorter came alongside the open doorway of the engine.

The engineer suddenly sensed something and turned his head. A look of complete terror crossed his face, his cheeks turning bright red. He pushed the waist-high throttle forward at the same instant he reached for a pistol on the shelf right in front of him. But Rock’s .12-gauge equalizer sent out a hailstorm of steel that ripped into the man’s abdomen, releasing his internal organs onto the floor in a single tidal wave of blood. The engineer looked down at his own guts and then slumped to the floor.

Yet the train barely slowed. Had Reston been bullshitting about the deadman’s throttle? But as the mist of blood and flesh cleared, the Doomsday Warrior could see that the dead man had fallen so that his body was half sitting, propped up against the chromed throttle.

“Shit,” spat Rockson, barely keeping pace with the Silver Bullet. He leaned forward and whispered in Snorter’s ear.

“Go, boy, run like you’ve never run before.” Whether the hybrid understood his exact words or not, it felt the urgency in his voice and surged forward, reaching down inside itself for its own brand of courage and strength. At last the running board was right beside him, and Rockson pulled his feet free of the stirrups and set both of them in the center of the saddle. The train rattled along seven feet away as the ’brid tried to steady itself at full gallop so its master could have firm footing. Rockson relaxed his mind, trying to pretend he was back on the mat at Century City, jumping over the backs of kneeling students. He pushed up with all his strength, uncoiling his muscled legs, and flew onto the side of the engine, barely catching a steel rod with one hand. Instantly, Rock pulled himself up and into the locomotive, kicking the dead man to the side to release the throttle.

“Not so fast, mister brave, brave man,” a voice threatened from behind. Rock turned to see a shotgun leveled at his chest, held by a husky, disheveled man whose red face was covered with sweat and coal dust. “I see you killed my pal here,” the man said coolly, glancing at the thing that lay on the floor, still pumping blood. “Don’t matter. He was an asshole, anyway.” He grinned. “In a way, you did me a favor, fella. I’ll be top dog around here now. So thanks a lot.” He sighted down the long twin-barreled weapon. “Too bad I has to kill you, too—but see, that’ll make me a hero, and then—well, you understand.”

Rock sent the command to his legs to jump, knowing it was too late. The blast of the wide muzzle would catch him within yards. He flew through the air, hitting hard on the other side of the wide engine room, slightly astounded that he was still alive. He turned, raising his shotpistol quickly, and stared in amazement. The man’s entire head had been severed from his body and was slowly falling over, pulling a trail of bloody arteries behind it. A boomerang whistled out the other doorway of the Silver Bullet’s engine room, a boomerang with a narrow, murderously sharp blade protruding from the front of its V shape. The boomer stopped on a dime without slowing its spin, and whipped around the front of the engine and then back along the side of the train. The head of Rockson’s would-be destroyer fell from its body, sending a geyser of bright red blood straight up, and slapped down onto the floor rolling a few feet like a bowling ball. The body seemed to melt like butter, the legs bending, the backbone folding up like an accordion. It slammed into the floor where it lay, hands and feet twitching spasmodically in shock at the quick end to what had seemed about to be quite a promising and financially rewarding life.

With the body released from the fail-safe throttle, the braking system of the train locked every wheel on the engine, bringing the entire train to a screaming halt, sparks flying as if the wheels were on fire. As it stopped Rock ran to the door the boomer had come in and looked out. Lieutenant Boyd grinned back at him, wiping his weapon clean.

“It’s bloody awful messy—but it does get the job done.”

“Bloody is the word,” Rock said, his clothes drenched with the dead man’s supply. “But I’ll buy that boomerang a beer any fucking time it wants one.”

In the car directly behind Rock, Chen and Detroit had clawed their way aboard and hung on for dear life as they waited for Rock to do his thing up front. The moment the train came to a halt, they smashed through the door and came in running. The five Red Army Com men inside were still rising from their chairs in front of their communications equipment. Their faces froze as they saw the dirt-encrusted Freefighters with their fierce eyes. Detroit unleashed a burst of fire from his Liberator, hitting one wall.

“Who wants to die?” he yelled out. “Speak up, ’cause I’m more than ready to oblige.” The five Reds looked at each other for a split second, then three of them grabbed the pistols hanging at their sides and searched out the pair of bandits who dared attack the heavily armed train. But their fingers never got the chance to even find the triggers. Detroit shot off another stream of slugs, catching two of them in the chest. They flew backward as if struck by the fists of a giant, hitting the side walls of the Com car and sliding to the floor, leaving a smeared trail of blood on the wall behind them. The third man had his Turganev pistol nearly sighted on the blackie when he heard a soft whistling sound. He turned for a split second just in time to see one of Chen’s star-knives rip into his face like a buzz saw. When it came out the other side, there wasn’t much left up top.

“Any more heroes?” Chen yelled out, holding another of the five-pointed blades in his right hand, ready to fling. The remaining two Reds cowered on the floor, their hands nowhere near their pistols.

“Please don’t kill me,” one of them, a skinny acned man with thick-lensed glasses, begged them. “We are not battle soldiers—just communications men.”

“No one gets killed who don’t ask for it,” Detroit assured the man. “We just want to borrow this train for a little vacation ride—not massacre every one of you bastards in here. Though, God knows, I’m sure you all deserve it.” The two Freefighters walked to the Com equipment, looking it over. Headphones crackled with static electricity, but no voices were frantically asking what had happened—so it appeared they’d stopped any signals from being sent out.

“All right,” Detroit said, lowering his rifle slightly, knowing that Chen, with his star-knives and super fighting abilities, would cover his back. “Now which one of you Russian warriors wants to volunteer for overtime?” The two men looked at one another, their eyes debating whether to be brave—or alive.

“I will help,” the acne-faced one said, slowly rising from the floor. “Just let me live—and I will do what you want.”

“Good. Better than good—excellent,” Detroit said, walking with the man back to his chair in front of the complex-looking transmission equipment. He sat down and put on some earphones, but as Detroit looked away momentarily, thinking he heard something at the far end of the car, the Red threw a switch and began broadcasting frantically.

“We are under attack, we are under attack. This is the Silver—” He never got to finish his sentence, as one of Chen’s star-knives flew across the room like a bird seeking a home. It found one—dead center of the man’s neck. The five-pointed blade sliced through the back of the spinal chord, sending out a light spray of blood, and the body slumped down into the seat, the headphones falling from the man’s ears.

A crackling, static-punctuated voice was talking back through the earphones. “Who is this? Who is sending this distress call? Please send again. What force is this? Who is attacking you?”

Detroit didn’t dare touch any of the buttons or dials on the floor-to-ceiling Com equipment. He stepped away from it as if it were on fire and looked down at the Red who still sat on the floor, twitching with final death quivers.

“Well, pal, looks like you’re the last one left. Let me put it to you straight,” he said, looking into the fear-filled face, trying to gauge just what kind of man he was. “I need you—and you need me. Whatever you’ve heard from your Red propaganda machines—we ain’t just bloodthirsty killers. If you do exactly what I say, you live—I guarantee it. We’ll even tie you up, make it appear you were tortured by us. You understand what I’m saying? We’re taking this train all the way to the end of the line—and we need a Com man to get us through.” He lowered his rifle again, until the tip of the barrel was pointing right at the Red’s tear-filled eyes. “So what’s it gonna be, fella?”

“I’ll help, I will, I swear,” the cowering Russian replied. “I—I—just don’t want to die. I have family—children—here, see,” he said, reaching toward his jacket slowly, and extracting a picture of his happy home in Moscow. “See—three little babushkas. I have never killed any Americans. I am just a—”

“Calm down, pal, save your breath. You’re hired. Now just get back in that chair—do exactly what we say—and you’ll be seeing your babushkas again. You have my word.” Detroit looked the man square in the eyes, trying to show him that, unlike the Reds, the Americans could be trusted—were true to their promises.

“Yes, yes, I believe you. I will help.”

In the cars behind the Com Unit, nearly two hundred Red officers ranging all the way up to the rank of General had been having leisurely drinks and snacks in the Silver Bullet’s four dining and recreation cars. The train really was little more than a vacation cruise à la rails. When speed was of the essence, the Russian officers would fly to their destinations. But men, even Communists, need relaxation—and the two-thousand-mile journey across the central and eastern part of the country was one of the few places they could let it all hang out, bring their mistresses aboard, enjoy the gourmet food of the cooking staff, and take in the views—through radiation-shielded windows—of the beauty and devastation that was America. Though this particular journey had started out as R&R for the Reds aboard, with the Mad Killov on the loose they were always in danger. Yet, where were they all to go? If the Red fortresses had been captured, they were all doomed. Most on board had elected to continue on to Washington, which they were sure was still in the hands of President Zhabnov. They prayed godless prayers that they wouldn’t be attacked en route by KGB forces—and tried to enjoy what little time they might have left. But their dining, card playing, and sex with the fifty or so young beauties who were always on hand to carry out even the most depraved desires were rudely interrupted.

Sipping a cup of spicy cappuccino, Major Korsky stared out the wide pink-tinted window next to his linen-covered table. He was deep in thought when he suddenly saw shapes appearing out of the woods. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was seeing things, as he hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the last four days. But when he took his hands from his bloodshot eyes, the apparitions were still there, looming closer by the second. Wild-looking men, brandishing rifles and weapons he couldn’t even begin to make heads or tails of, riding the strangest assortment of beasts he had ever seen. The officers seated around the dining cars jumped up from their tables and ran to the windows to stare out at the motley caravan of hybrids, camels, Freefighters, and Aussies. At first, the mob brought smiles to some of their faces. Of course there was no way the group could board the train—not while it was moving. But when the Silver Bullet lurched to a stop, their expressions of amusement changed to stark terror.