Doomsday Warrior 09 - America’s Zero Hour (2 page)

The team began to vacuum the walls and floor of the tunnel with small hand-held vacuums. The loose dust and powdery mountain pumice had to be contained. Only then could the secondary teams come in, remove the bodies, and begin the more careful decontamination of the entire area.

At first the cleanup was relatively easy, as the main tunnel was wide enough for them to go around portions that had caved in, but when they reached the beginning of the smaller side tunnels the going got rougher. At last the debris from the collapsed walls virtually stopped their progress. Rockson pulled out the blueprints of the elaborate tunnel system. There were hundreds of passageways—many of them built when the original highway had been linked with mineshafts over a hundred years earlier. There were tunnels for ventilation, for electrical connection, to different sections of the two-mile-long structure. In addition, thirty three-foot-wide thermal heat shaft-ways had been dug out over the last century by the builders of the Freefighting city. They contained hot steam from volcanic sources.

“Here, men,” Rockson said, his voice swallowed by the helmet which had a small speaker-slot near his mouth.

He pointed to an archway that had debris filling it nearly to the ceiling. “This is Q Section—the entrance hall to some of the newer weapons labs. If we can get this tunnel cleared up we will have done our job—for today.” Schecter had warned Rock not to keep the team in the high-rad zones for more than five hours. After that he wasn’t going to guarantee the protective capabilities of the suits.

Detroit came forward on Rockson’s wave of the hand. “Should I set a charge?” the ebony-faced Freefighter asked, his bull shoulders apparent even in the cumbersome suit.

Rockson looked at the wall of broken concrete. “A small one. If there’s no tunnel beyond this debris, if Q Section is completely collapsed, a large explosion could send all its rubble shooting out at us. Put one—right in the middle—between those two big rocks. Set the charge for two point five.”

Detroit carefully placed the cylindrical charges in a space between the cement boulders, and they all retreated to what they thought was a sufficient distance. Rockson’s hand pressed down the detonator.

But something went wrong. The tunnel shook with a volcanic concussion making the men’s very bones vibrate. A storm of granite and collapsing concrete roared down toward them tearing the supports out from the main tunnel’s reinforced walls. They turned and began running, but instantly were being pounded by the crumbling roof of the tunnel.

The flashbeams of their helmet lights were cracked by the torrent of debris. As they stumbled ahead in the near-total darkness, their breathing filters became clogged and the air in the helmets grew gritty and suffocating. And still the roaring continued. Rockson felt rather than saw the presence of the others behind, heard their heavy breathing, their yells to one another to keep together. Then he heard a scream just behind him—one of the men had been downed, slammed to the cold rock floor. It sounded like Lyons’s voice. Rockson wanted to stop and turn, but the safety of all of them depended on him leading them forward out of this mess. Before they got buried alive!

All around Rockson the walls suddenly caved in—a boiling avalanche of boulders and powder. He dove forward with a powerful kick and hit the dirt in the clear corridor ahead, rolling over several times. He came up in a half-crouch, fished his auxiliary flash from his belt, and looked back. The entire tunnel, a distance of about thirty feet behind, had been sealed in by the collapse. He was alone.

He rose, and walked slowly forward, not sure if more of the ceiling was about to fall down and squeeze him into pulp. He came up to the wedge of rocks covered with a flowing curtain of dust and screamed out at the top of his lungs, “Anyone there? Chen? Detroit?”

Nothing. He yelled again. “Anyone there? Goddamn you, answer me, you bastards. You
can’t
be dead. You can’t be.” He smashed the light against the granite wall in fury and then cursed himself for being so stupid. But the thing flickered and then kept shining, apparently willing to give him another chance.

Suddenly he heard a far-off muffled sound and leapt against the mound of debris pressing his helmet to it, trying to hear. He couldn’t be sure if it was the groaning of another foundation beam giving way or a human voice. Then he heard it clearly: “Roooccckkksssooonnnn.” It was his friend Archer, the bearish-sized Freefighter. He was alive.

“I’m here, Archer—are you okay?” He flashed his beam all along the dusty holes in the collapsed material. He saw a hand through one of the spaces. He crawled forward—there was just about enough room in the tangle of debris to do so—for about fifteen feet. He saw a powdery face sticking out of the crush of rock and dust. And somehow Archer had a dumb smile plastered across his white-bearded jaw.

Rockson pushed slowly on the oval-shaped boulder that was squarely atop the giant man’s chest. After seconds, it rolled to the side, without dislodging the tunnel wall. Archer sucked in a huge gasp as he had barely been able to breathe and tried to rise in the confined space.

“Anyone else—did you see anyone else go down?” Rockson asked the four-hundred-pound-plus mountain man.

Archer nodded, and pointed to his side to a rabbit-hole of an opening. Rockson played his light on it. It was the small alcove that they had passed—just an access to a storage area—could the team be alive in there?

“Archer, are you hurt?” Can you help me?” Rock asked.

“Yesss. Meeee help,” Archer growled. They moved some debris carefully and reached the small opening Archer had indicated.

Rockson had Archer hold his immense back against a partially collapsed main beam while he crawled forward to the hole, praying the bear of a man would be able to hold up that part of the tunnel—otherwise there’d be no escape. The Doomsday Warrior crawled forward barely able to fit through, found the narrow hallway beyond. He saw a shape in the light beam.

“Rock—Heavy,” Archer groaned behind him. Rockson couldn’t make out the shape down the jagged passageway, but it was roundish. He waited for the dust he had disturbed to settle before he was sure. It was a body, a human body in a rad-suit. The Doomsday Warrior’s face blanched as he pulled the helmet off. The man’s teeth popped out like broken marbles, the head cleanly severed from the crushed bloody torso of a body. Shit—he couldn’t even tell who it was anymore. His heart began to sink down into his feet: they were dead. After all the Russian armies, the mutations, the acid storms . . . Chen, Detroit, all of them, gone in the rubble of their own city, due to his own error.

Suddenly he saw a slit of illumination ahead, like a sword cutting through the stew of swirling dust.

“Anyone there?” he screamed. It could just be one of the headlamps dropped to the ground, with a crushed skull sitting in the helmet beneath it. “Anyone—anyone at all, can you hear me?” Rockson listened with his senses on full alert for the slightest confirmation of life. Then he heard it—indistinct at first, just a slight tapping sound. But regular—in patterns of threes. Someone was alive in there.

“Archer!” Rockson commanded, swinging around halfway inside the precarious tunnel. The ceiling shifted uneasily above him as if debating whether to fall and crush the puny flesh to an oozing slime. “You’ve got to hold, understand?—got to stay there.”

“Arrrcher stay,” the immense Freefighter said with a sigh of resignation. He looked up at the tons of weight he was barely able to keep aloft—his body pressed with all the might of his tree-size legs against the main upright timber at the very edge of the secondary tunnel. It squeaked and cracked with a most alarming volume. But he held.

Rockson turned forward again, gulped, and started crawling down the narrow passageway, the air gray with clouds of fine dust. He was able to move forward another fifteen feet, sliding around the beams that lay snapped, the timbers sliced jaggedly, their splinters reaching up trying to snag him. At last he could go no further, as he came face to face with a wall of collapsed granite and concrete. Rock put his mouth up against the narrow crack along one side where he saw a shaft of light. He spit out the grit and yelled.

“Anyone alive? Anyone at all?”

“Rock! Rock? Is that you?” a voice came back from the other end, sounding as dim and muffled as if it was from the moon.

“Yeah, I hear you, thank God,” Rockson yelled, letting his taut gut relax for the first time. He had been sure they had all died except Archer.

“It’s Chen, Rock. Believe it or not, we’re all here except Archer and Harrison. Bruises, blood. But everyone’s alive.”

“Listen pal, there’s no time for talk!” Rock screamed back. “And there’s no time for digging you out. This whole area looks like it’s going to go anytime. And once it does, it’s curtains for all of you. I remember that this passageway comes to a dead end about fifty feet behind you, with nothing but solid granite mountain for a full half-mile. We have to go out my way—and it’s hell. There’s ten or fifteen feet of heavy debris between me and you. I’ve got to do something—drastic.”

“Go ahead, Rock, we’re with you—whatever you decide,” Chen shouted back. “Good luck.”

“I’d hoped you’d say that,” the Doomsday Warrior screamed, his lips pressed between the edges of cold stone. “Now get back—all of you. I’ve got two charges left on my belt. I’m going to wedge them about halfway down this wall here and try to blast the motherfucker open. Archer is playing Atlas beyond me. The moment the blast ends, run, you hear me?—run like wolves are on your ass, even if I’m . . . not around.”

“Roger,” Chen yelled. “We’re heading to the back. Will rendezvous in about ten seconds. Hope I see you again.”

“Me too,” Rockson muttered as he pulled back from the space and took the cylindrical charges out. The thought of their deaths at his hands wasn’t something he could let himself ponder. He pushed in with his arm, as far as he could, until the explosive packs were over a yard into the blockage. He shimmied backward until he was just shielded by a barrel-sized chunk of mountain that had fallen down, and pressed the detonation switch. The entire world around him shook as if he were in the grip of a vengeful God’s hand and it was being squeezed tighter every second. The roar, the dust, the powerful vibrations of the passage floor, all disoriented Rock for a few seconds as he barely realized where he was. Then it stopped, the echoes rolling down the myriad passages and tunnels of the mountain and a flood of thick dust pouring toward him. And in the midst of it—a running shape, and then another.

“Should have known you’d be asleep on the job,” Chen said as he rushed to Rockson almost slamming into him in the near darkness. Chen helped Rock stand and move out.

The rad-suit-clad survivors ran in half-crouches down the smoky passage. “Link hands,” Rock shouted. They did; it was the blind leading the blind in the impenetrable smoke. After thirty feet, the beam of the lamp somehow lit enough of a line of sight to just avoid the spearlike beams and twisted spears of metal that probed out from everywhere. Chen was holding Rock’s hand, and Detroit behind him his, so that all the way down the line, they were connected like a rock-climbing team. It was not the time to get left behind.

Rock saw Archer ahead, straining with every ounce of his incredible strength to keep the tunnel entrance from collapsing down around them. When he reached him, Rockson squeezed alongside him and pushed with his back as well, as the line of men rushed past them into the more-open tunnel ahead. There was no time left. The charges had been the last straw. Though they pushed with their combined power, the entire frame was going—the support beam shrieking out a high-pitched sound as its hard wooden guts snapped in two. Archer suddenly jumped free from the side and threw his arms under the crossbeam as if trying to take the entire weight of the mountain. Titans had done less in ancient days of myth, than Archer did now. But he was just a man. And Rockson knew the loyal fool would stay there forever to save the rest of them.

“I’m not leaving till you come,” he yelled out as he readied himself to move. “On the count of three, we both let go and get the hell out of here. Okay, you understand?”

“Uu-nnd’rrstan,” the giant Freefighter managed to croak out through lips drained of blood.

“One, two—three!” Rockson screamed, and they both shot away from the archway and toward the tunnel where the rest of the team was waiting for them. The arch gave way the moment they pulled free and came down toward them even as they moved away. The dust and the falling rocks and chunks seemed to almost reach out for the two fleeing humans as if not wanting them to get away. They both tore ass into the wider tunnel, the beams of the ceiling cracking just behind them, one after another, as if following them down the passage.

“Move, move,” Rock screamed at the stalled line, and Chen in the lead took off. They say sometimes the main part of valor is to know when to run, to run with every bit of strength and heart you have. And now was such a time. Eight of the toughest fighters in America tore down the half-blocked passages without a glance back. Ran as the lowest level of Century City collapsed all around them. Ran even as the noise at last receded behind them, and the cave-in came to a stop. At last they reached the ramp to the higher level and slowed down, collapsing in a gasping heap on the floor. They lay there long minutes, each man praying to his own private God, in thanks for another reprieve in the eternal chess game of death. They doffed their helmets. Rockson caught Archer looking at him with a pleased expression in his grime-coated eyes.

“You did well, pal,” the Doomsday Warrior said as he rose to his feet. “I’m recommending you for the city’s highest decoration.”

Archer growled, “Meee—goood!”

Once back in the living levels of Century City, the men went through the decontamination procedure to ensure that no radioactive material was allowed to come into the city. They came to a room filled with telephone-booth-sized chambers and disrobed, putting the high-rad suits in special lead deposit boxes.

Rock entered the enclosed glass chamber. The door closed with a slam, followed by a sudden rush of air as the atmosphere Rock carried with him from the radioactive area lifted and was replaced by Century City’s tri-filtered air.