Doomsday Warrior 01 (6 page)

On the third day, the woods grew thinner. Fields of small, highly misshapen, red and pink poppies took over the terrain. Small field creatures were plentiful here, moles and skunks, mice and chipmunks, darting from cover as the men walked near their holes and hiding places. They entered a field of black wheat—long, thin stalks with purple dandelion-puff seeds on the tips. The Freefighters brushed against the puffs with their clothes as they walked through the waving field and freed the seeds which flew into the air by the millions, floating violet in the evening sun.

They walked on for days, continually encountering meadows of constantly changing plant life. It was as if a different strain of seeds had been planted on every hill. The flowers and vegetation were evolving for some reason in isolated little fields of their own. They passed roses with petals as big as baseball mitts, red and green, beautiful, fragrant and ringed with inch-long poisonous spikes; daisies of black and blue, mixtures of pastel gray and maroon, mauve and ember, dark and beautiful in the white light of the rising moon.

Rockson kept the lead as he always did when on the move, always looking ahead into the darkness, beyond the line of sight. Something ahead! He slowed the Freefighters down with a wave of his right hand, one of many hand signals they used, and crept forward on his toes to investigate. A glow. The ground seemed to be shimmering with a strange, wavering fire. He walked closer now. Whatever it was it didn’t feel dangerous. Before him lay a large circle of constantly shifting white light, a good hundred feet in diameter. As Rock walked closer he could scarcely believe his eyes. “Good God, it’s alive!” he muttered out loud. The phosphorescent circle of light was moving with rippling energy, alive with motion, spinning, whirling. Millions of tiny glowing larvae, wormlike creatures with one eye as big as a penny and bodies that throbbed like a heart from light bulb dim to flash bulb bright. They pulsed in patterns, sending waves of light and shadow across the living pond.

The rest of the Attack Force gathered behind Rockson who stood about thirty feet away from the living organism.

“What the hell is that?” Detroit asked, moving closer.

“No, no, stay away!” Rockson said quickly. “They’re an insect of some sort but I wouldn’t get too close. That pack has to feed on
something.
”

“Ever seen anything like that?” McCaughlin asked Rock.

“No, never,” he replied softly. “Never! It must be a totally new life form.” They watched in fascination, hypnotized by the warm patterns, the endless mosaics of curves and stretching lines of magnetic pulsation.

Suddenly a forest animal darted near the edge of the glowing organism opposite from where the Freefighters stood. Too close! A pseudopod of the glowing larvae snapped out from the pond and up to the bank, bringing the deerlike creature down instantly. It was pulled back into the throbbing pool and sucked down within seconds into the glow. The millions of larvae now throbbed as one like a great searchlight flashing on and off. After about ten seconds there was calm. The light seemed to dim suddenly and lose energy. The luminescence calmed to a dull glow.

“It ate and now it’s sleeping,” Detroit said with a chuckle.

“Just like a human,” McCaughlin added.

Four

G
en. Mikael Zhabnov peered at his ruddy, fat face in the mirror held in front of him by a trembling barber. The general’s black goatee had been well trimmed, his ruddy cheeks had been smoothed and his thinning wisps of blond hair were combed straight and flat across his nearly bald pate. Oily, the way he liked it. Scented.

The diminutive Afghan barber, who Zhabnov had brought with him all the way from Moscow, grinned as he saw the general obviously pleased with the trimming. Zhabnov smiled somewhere in his jowls and ran his thick, hairy fingers over his chin.

“Your excellency is happy with Abdul’s work?” the barber asked nervously.

“Don’t be presumptuous, barber,” Zhabnov snapped. “Your work is adequate, that is all. If it weren’t—” The threat went unspoken: the labor brigades in the hot zones. The little man stuttered out a stream of inane apologies to which Zhabnov merely grunted. He pulled the white wrap sheet from his voluminous body and stood up. The barbar ran to him, sprinkling him with talcum powder with one hand and dusting him off with a whisk broom with the other.

“Enough, enough,” Zhabnov, the supreme president of all the Socialist States of America, said, waving his hands in the air. “Why must I be surrounded by fools?” He adjusted his bright olive uniform, pressed sharp as a blade, and the twin golden emblems on his collar, an eagle carrying a hammer and sickle in its huge claws, the symbol of his rank, and strode toward the door stiffly, sucking in his gut, raising his broad shoulders. The guards that were present everywhere in the well-preserved White House saluted and clicked their heels on both sides of the door as he exited the barbershop, located in one of many complexes that ran deep beneath the ancient building. From these offices General Zhabnov ruled America, sending out commands, gathering records and proof-of-shipment of crops to designated ports for transport back to Russia. It was a huge bureaucracy that had existed and grown for nearly a century, until it was as fat and complacent as a slug. And it ran itself—which was just fine with Zhabnov, who didn’t want to be bothered with “paper work.”

He stepped into his private elevator and sped up to the top level and out into the hallway of the West Wing.

Zhabnov was always slightly awed by all the portraits of the past presidents of the United States—Eisenhower, Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan, and their Soviet successors—and the huge, haunting portrait of Washington, in gilded frame, always staring at him, eyes burning, accusing. He had asked Premier Vassily once if it were not possible to have that portrait of Washington filled in a bit, just around the eyes. Vassily had screamed, “You fool. That painting is priceless. It’s a Stuart. Don’t you know anything about history? You touch one paintbrush to it and you’re out. You serve at my pleasure and never forget it.”

Zhabnov glared back up at the portrait as he stepped by. Damn thing took up the whole wall. He sighed as he walked up to the door of the Oval Office. Another Russian guard snapped to attention, holding his Kalashnikov straight out in front of him, his eyes glued on infinity. Zhabnov walked over to the “presidential” teakwood desk and collapsed into his chair. Aside from the present occupant, the building and grounds were still exactly as they were before the war. Washington hadn’t even been targeted except for four neutron bombs strategically dropped around the city. The Reds wanted to rule America from the same headquarters the Americans had. It would make the “transition” that much easier. Besides, the American president had been off in Oregon, cutting a ribbon for a new dam. That whole state was just layer upon layer of overlapping craters. The Soviet generals had gone mad in their fear that somehow the American president would survive to lead the United States in a counterattack. A pity! Zhabnov thought. Oregon was said to have once been the most beautiful of the fifty states.

The supreme commander was too fat for the presidential chair. These damn American presidents, how could they have been so thin. And his Russian antecedents in the office that he now held—Bulganin, Medledov, Orlovsky and the others—were they all so narrow, too? Bah. He picked up the ornate antique phone which instantly crackled to life. A male operator said, “Yes, sir,” in an excited voice.

“Give me Killov,” Zhabnov demanded.

“Home or office?” the new operator asked nervously.

“Office, office,” the supreme commander bellowed out. “Do I ever call my
friend
at home? Do you think I want to talk to his maid, his cook? Idiot—his office, of course.”

“Yessir, sorry!” the operator sputtered. The phone began ringing. Zhabnov coughed, preparing his warmest voice. Despite his bluster and sarcasm with the operator, Zhabnov had to admit he was a little afraid of this Killov. If Zhabnov hadn’t been the nephew of Premier Vassily he would suspect that Killov was being groomed by the premier to replace him.

“Yes?” an unmistakable voice answered. The cold, crisp diction of the head of KGB-Amerika—the dreaded Blackshirts.

“Killov, it’s the president.” Zhabnov used his title as often as possible. “We’ve got to talk!”

“Talk!” Killov replied coolly. Zhabnov burned red. Now, the KGB commander was actually challenging him openly. The general calmed himself. He had no desire to tangle with him.

“Well, it’s this little matter I have before me on my desk. I just got it actually and I thought I would call you about it so it could be straightened out—ironed out as the Americans say—before it got into the hands of the premier.” In fact, Zhabnov had been staring at the document from Killov for some days now. It was a request to use neutron weapons
—neutron weapons
—against some suspected rebel resistance areas around the country. This man Killov always overestimated the danger from these ragged bands of counterrevolutionaries, hiding in caves in the mountains eating berries and rats.

“Oh,” Killov said testily, “you only
just
received my urgent request to stop these scum who have attacked our forces with impunity. The army doesn’t seem able to handle it properly.”

“My staff downgraded its importance,” Zhabnov said curtly, fuming at Killov’s second dig at his command of all the occupying military forces. “I have been occupied with important matters for days.”

“Downgraded the report on clandestine resistance bases?”

“Downgraded the
speculation
you sent me about these so-called Freefighters.”

“I assure you, Mr. President, these Americans are much better armed and equipped than you can imagine. Several patrols have simply vanished without a trace in Colorado and Utah lately—and others are being attacked with increasing frequency.”

“And you think this is the result of resistance fighters?” Zhabnov asked, turning his chair and staring out the window at the front lawn, with its omnipresent row of tanks next to the rose garden. “Probably some of our green soldiers made a wrong turn in a magnetic storm or got themselves eaten by those toothy American wolf dogs.”

“Mr. President, wolves don’t make off with all the ammunition and medical supplies.” Zhabnov was such a fool.

“So these patrols fell down some crevasses, or died in one of those sandstorms. Killov, you are too excitable. The premier—I know this for sure, I talked to him in person at his granddaughter’s wedding in Minsk, only last month—wants to limit military action. You must get out in the fresh clean air of Mother Russia more. The premier pulls me aside at the reception and tells me, ‘Nephew, please’—he is so polite—‘Please, don’t use any more atomic weapons in America. There is enough radiation in the world.’ Now is that not what you are planning to do, Commander Killov? Use those Enhanced Radiation Neutron Devices?”

“Small atomic devices. Flashes of radiation that only destroy life and rapidly diminish in a few days.”

“Killov, no more radiation! That’s what the premier wants. He is a conservationist, an ecologist, a humanitarian. We can’t go dropping atomic bombs on a few ragged—” Killov was silent on the other end. His lips were tight and pale. Finally he spoke.

“Mikael Ivanovich,” he said using the familiar, “just do me one favor. Bring it to the attention of the premier that we may not have a United Socialist States of America for the centennial next year if I am not able to discharge my duties.”

“Your duties are intelligence. Intelligence, Killov. Intelligence, counterespionage and internal security. You have expanded your function, with my—and the premier’s—permission. You have expanded your Blackshirt force to over five hundred thousand, with, I must say, a tremendous budget. Do I not let you send in your Deathhead paratroop commandos to destroy these wretched freedom brigades—which, as I’m sure you know, many of the other generals do not appreciate at all, considering it a usurpation of their authority. And now you want still more. Can’t you do the job without pulverizing the country that feeds Mother Russia?”

“Approach the premier,” Killov continued firmly, as if he hadn’t heard a word of Zhabnov’s tirade. “Tell him I need more troops, more weapons if he is against using these neutron weapons. We have a situation here in America, a critical one!”

Zhabnov let the KGB leader sweat for a minute as he admired the bright cherry redness of the roses that surrounded the White House. Why, they almost disguised the barbed-wire fence that ran through their delicate petals. “I’ll tell you what, my friend,” Zhabnov spoke up briskly. “I’m attending the annual party meeting in Leningrad next month. I will personally intervene with my uncle at that time and persuade him you need more of everything—”

“Including the neutron devices—”

“Including a few, two or three, neutron devices to destroy these annoying American bandits once and for all.”

“Thank you Mikael Ivanovich,” Killov said. “I will, of course, repay you for this favor.” He hung up.

Zhabnov let the phone drop from his fingers and fall onto the receiving hook with a snap. Of course he had no intention of letting the KGB expand its operations in the United States. It was already too large, a threat to the normal military channels and control. Zhabnov pleaded with the premier at every opportunity to reduce Killov’s Blackshirt force, but Vassily would only smile in that grandfatherly way and say, “You worry too much, nephew. I only let Killov play with his toy soldiers in America to occupy him. He is not . . . normal, you know. He likes to hurt, to destroy things, people, land. So, we in the Presidium asked ourselves: where can such a person be useful? And the answer: America. Let him destroy these Freefighters. They seem afraid of nothing except such as Killov. And does not Killov keep his part of the bargain—sending over good breeding stock of American females with their fertile bodies and radiation-resistant genes? I think you had best put up with the Blackshirts and just keep the production of wheat and corn in line with the five-year plan. That is your job. I know you can handle it, can’t you?”