Doomsday Warrior 03 - The Last American (17 page)

“We’re going to have to go down,” the Doomsday Warrior said, taking out his medical supplies from the pack on Snorter’s back. “I think he’s dead—the fall was too great. But we’ve got to find out.” He leaned out over the edge and yelled down, but there was no answer. “I think we should both go,” Rock said to Chen. “No telling just what we’ll find down there.” They threw some supplies over their shoulders and tied the two ropes together, putting one end around Snorter’s saddlehorn again.

Rockson went first, moving slowly as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He had to move carefully to avoid the sharp, cutting fragments of rock poking out everywhere from the walls. Within minutes both men had rappelled down to a ledge about thirty feet above the ’brid and Keppel.

“Damn, the rope’s run out,” Rock said, as Chen joined him on the outcropping. “We’ll have to climb down from here.” He snapped on a small lantern he had taken from his field pack and clamped it to his utility belt, stuffed to the brim with cartridges and other military hardware. They looked around, on the alert for the unknown. They were in a large cavern, on a ten-foot ledge. Below them the space widened greatly, with what appeared to be small circular tunnels leading off in all directions.

“What the hell are those?” Chen asked, pointing to the almost perfectly round tunnellike openings.

“I think I know,” Rock said mysteriously. “And I hope we don’t find out.” They climbed down, using the outcroppings of sharp rock on the fissure walls, and dropped down to the cavern floor. There was blood everywhere. The ’brid was a mess, its legs all broken and bones poking through at odd angles. It lifted its big golden brown head as they approached and let out a low, plaintive moan. Rock took out his .12 gauge shotgun pistol and held it at the creature’s skull.

“Goodbye boy, I’m sorry this had to happen.” He pulled the trigger and the hybrid flopped back, jerked several times, and then was still. They quickly made their way across the cavern, able to see only dimly with Rock’s small lantern.

There—a human form covered in blood. Rock leaned down and turned Dean Keppel over. The face was a pulpy mess, the nose smashed all the way to one side, one of the man’s eyes sliced in half, dripping a sticky liquid. His arms were both broken, hanging at the side like snapped twigs, and his chest seemed to have been half crushed on one side, staining his fatigue jacket a dark scarlet. Chen reached over and put his fingertips against the scholar’s throat.

“Believe it or not Rock, he’s still alive. Pulse faint, but there.”

“Can you do anything for him?” Rock asked. Chen’s fighting abilities were his primary focus, but he had also studied widely in the oriental healing arts—shiatsu, acupuncture, Chi alignment, and herbal healing.

“Rock, this sounds terrible, but I think he would have been better off dying. I have no supplies at all with me for this kind of injury. If we even move him we may sever his spinal cord or push a bone through his heart. He’s obviously suffered massive internal damage. I don’t know where to begin.” Chen looked hopelessly at the mortally wounded Keppel. Rockson could see that he felt terrible for not being able to do more.

“Don’t worry about the fine points,” the Doomsday Warrior said. “It happened, and now we have to deal with it. One—we’ve got to move him. Down here, the cold, Christ knows what else will do him in in hours, anyway. We’ll have to rig up some kind of lift, get him up top, and see what we can do. There’s no choice.” Rockson told Chen to stay with Keppel while he went to the surface to rig up some kind of lift from a blanket find some of the tent poles and get more rope.

The climb up was a lot harder then the descent had been. Rock had to pull himself up hand over hand for two hundred feet. His muscles bulged with oxygenated blood as they lifted his two hundred thirty pounds to the surface. Ms. Shriver half screamed when she suddenly saw his hand appear over the edge of the crevice.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve come to get more supplies.”

“You mean the dean is alive?” Her eyes brightened instantly.

“Barely,” Rock replied softly. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

He gathered the materials he needed and a second lamp from Chen’s pack and headed down again. This time the descent was quick and easy, as he knew the footholds and outcroppings; He reached bottom and went over to Chen who sat next to and behind the wounded man, touching the base of his neck with his hands.

“I’m trying to increase the Chi Kung flow. Not that it will help, but—” Rockson set about putting the makeshift rig together and within ten minutes had made something that looked like it would work.

“Let’s roll him over, real careful, onto it,” Chen said. Better to roll than lift—don’t want to put any strain on the spinal cord.” They got the profusely bleeding Keppel onto the cot—a blanket with a tent pole along each side—and tied him securely down.

“Now all we have to do is get him up,” Chen said, looking over at the high fissure that led to the top. They got on each end of the contraption and began walking slowly across the rock floor. Suddenly they both heard sounds at the same instant. Scuttling, crawling noises coming from all sides of the cavern. Rock turned his hip with the lantern on it at one of the walls. From out of the circular tunnels were pouring megapedes, hundreds of them—nearly three feet long, with slimy brown bodies and thousands of tiny undulating legs moving them forward at a high speed. Four long hooked mandibles opened and closed like threshing scythes in each jaw, snapping, anticipating dinner.

“Holy shit,” Chen said, as the two freefighters stood frozen for a moment, holding Keppel. Then, moving in a blur, with clockwork precision, they placed the wounded man on the cavern floor and drew their weapons. Rockson’s .12 gauge shotgun pistol was in his hands and firing at the closest of the horrendous squealing creatures. The shot spread quickly and turned five of them into minced meat, which for several seconds stopped the next wave, which ripped away at the flesh of their dead comrades.

Taking Rock’s back, Chen whipped out six exploding star-knives, three in each hand, and threw them like rockets toward the advancing wave of writhing brown skin. The six death stars went off three feet apart, blowing about twenty of the megapedes into brown dripping slime on the cave wall behind them. But there were more everywhere, every second. They kept emerging from the small tunnels that covered the cavern walls, jumping out and forward in a violent frenzy.

“They’re in a feeding frenzy,” Rock said. “This is their way of eating, just charge and whatever’s there—eat. Problem is I don’t think they’re smart enough to know they’re being killed, so they’re going to keep coming.”

“Rock if I’d known this trip was going to be this much fun I’d have booked an extra week. You’re a great guy to go out and have a good time with—anyone ever tell you that?”

“Plenty of times,” Rock said, reloading his pistol with widespread shells. “We at least need a more defensive position. Out here in the middle of this damn place . . .”

“If we could just get back to the ledge we could hold them off.” They both turned and looked to see a carpet of the giant carnivorous insects coming straight at them.

“Maybe I can clear a path,” Chen said. He pulled out six more of the wafer-thin five-pointed knives. “Let me throw them, then we’ll pick up Keppel and make a run for it. What do you think?”

“Ain’t nothing else happening,” Rock said, reaching down for his end of the rig. He kept his pistol in one hand aimed straight ahead. Chen breathed out, relaxed himself for a second, and then released the spinning blades, one after another. They whizzed through the dank air like little missiles. Then they exploded one after another in fifteen-foot intervals all the way to the ledge side of the cavern.

The freefighters tore through the broken bodies that littered the way. Those that weren’t mangled, lay on their sides, not moving so fast. They reached out with snapping jaws, trying to get a piece of the running humans, but got only air. Halfway there—most of the megapedes were dead where Chen had spun the knives, but already more waves were coming in from both sides. Ten feet ahead four of them blocked his path. Rock pulled the trigger of his huge pistol and blasted the way clear. Bits of hard brown skin floated down around them. Suddenly the Doomsday Warrior felt something slam into his leg—a megapede, the bottom half of its body blasted away, was still alive enough to close its huge jaws on Rock’s calf. He slowed only slightly, dragging the thing along, and managed to angle the gun down at it. He blasted just inches from his leg, and the top half of the giant insect, along with its swordlike jaws, disintegrated into red slop. Rock could feel a biting pain in his leg, but no nerves or tendons had been severed. He’d have to worry about it later.

They were almost at the ledge, stepping over bits and pieces of killer bug that covered the cavern floor. The new waves of the things had once again been slowed by their insatiable hunger—as they devoured the bloody flesh that was everywhere. They made loud sucking sounds as they grabbed everything they could find and slammed it into their crunching jaws.

“Now what?” Chen said, as they stopped at the base of the fissure that led up. They had only seconds at most.

“I’ll drop the rope—tie it to the top of the litter and then get your ass up here,” Rock said as he put down his end of the litter and scaled the side. He reached the ledge in seconds and dropped down the end of the extra rope he had brought. Chen quickly tied it to the end of Keppel’s rig and then lifted it so Rockson could get a good start on pulling it up. As soon as it was upright, he too shot up the cave wall, grabbing handholds and pulling himself up. He joined Rock on the ledge and helped him pull. The angle was bad and the litter kept catching on out croppings. Slowly, slowly, the mangled Keppel rose.

Suddenly one of the megapedes darted out of nowhere and up the wall toward the rising rig, now about half up to the ledge.

“Jesus, Rock, look,” Chen gasped. Everything happened in a millisecond—Rockson held on to the rope with his left hand and pulled his pistol with the right. The megapede seemed to understand that the rope was holding its meal up and rushed past the bleeding body. It snapped its four razor-sharp jaws closed on the rope just above the rig. Rock pulled the trigger, and the brown thousand-legged slime thing flew off the wall, its guts pouring out. But the damage had been done. The rope snapped, and Keppel fell back to the cavern floor. Within seconds a swarm of the things was on top of him, ripping at the white flesh, sucking the blood from the gaping chest wound.

“Oh God,” Rock said, his mouth hanging open for a second. Chen pulled out two of the exploding star-knives and without hesitating threw them into the writhing mass of megapedes atop the dean. The explosions turned the feast into a bloodbath—ripping the slurping insects into pieces along with Keppel. Rock and Chen stared down at the unrecognizable pool of blood and countless severed brown legs.

“I had to, Rock. Even though he was out cold, I couldn’t stand by and let them—eat him—like that.”

“You did the right thing, my friend,” Rockson said, looking at the mess below. Even Rock, who had seen just about every conceivable kind of violence in the world, was repulsed.

“A peaceful man dying such a hideous death,” Rock said, shaking his head slowly.

“Unfortunately, the good we do doesn’t necessarily protect us from evil,” Chen said softly, feeling a strange tightness in his gut from the deed he had just committed. He knew it was right—but it didn’t make him feel good, and he would have to live with that image forever.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Rock said, reloading his death dealer with shells. Below them, the megapedes filled the entire cavern floor, hundreds of them, slithering over one another in maddened hunger, eating the chunks of blasted insect that now lay everywhere, sucking from the puddles of blood. The two freefighters loaded the supplies on their shoulders and started the long climb up, Rock first. He had barely gotten ten feet when the rope gave and he plummeted back to the ledge, landing on top of Chen. Both men fell to the rock floor.

“What the hell,” the Doomsday Warrior said, jumping to his feet. They looked up the fissure opening that led to the surface. About fifty feet above, three megapedes were slithering down the wall, one of them with a big piece of rope still stuck in its jaws.

“Great,” Rock said, in utter disgust. “This has really been a good afternoon.” He raised the pistol as the three carnivores, jaws snapping, came rushing down at their prey. He fired twice and the three exploded off the wall as if trying to fly. Two fell down to the cavern floor, the third next to Rock and Chen, its bodiless head still snapping in a frenzy. Chen kicked it from behind with a powerful blow and it tumbled down to join its comrades.

“Things are starting to get a little serious,” the ninja warrior said, his black fighting suit now stained and splattered with bright red blood. He reached behind his back and took out the remaining star-knives he had been carrying. “I’ve got more upstairs, but only eight left,” he said to Rock. “You?”

“About fifteen cartridges.” They both looked down on the scene of carnage below. The megapedes were still in a mad rush to gobble up their ex-brothers, but both men knew that as soon as they were through they’d come hunting.

“The walls of the fissure are too smooth to climb without ropes,” Rock said, staring back up at the light far above, beckoning, out of reach.

“Gotta try,” Chen said. “All we have to do is get up about fifty feet—the top of the rope is just hanging there.” He grabbed the bloody rope that had fallen when bitten in half and wound it around his waist. “I’ll get up there, Rock, and tie them together. Here!” He handed Rockson the eight remaining explosive star-knives. “Don’t spend them all in one place,” he said, and rushed to the fissure wall. He leapt up, hugging his body to the smooth surface, searching for any sort of handhold. The surface here was different than in the cavern below, it was more like the ground up top—smooth, slippery. Chen had trained in climbing every sort of surface—from trees to solid rock cliffs. But this stuff was like climbing on glass. He got up about fifteen feet and then slowed almost to a crawl. He took out his fighting knife from a hidden pocket and smashed away at the crystalline wall. The blade was supertempered magnasteel, but it didn’t even scratch the fissure wall. Somehow Chen managed to squeeze up another ten feet, his arms and legs straining with the pressure of holding on to indentations not more than an inch deep. The sweat from his exertions was starting to make things even more slippery. He reached up for the tiniest of protuberances about a foot above him and set three fingers on it. But as he pulled himself up, his hand, wet with moisture, slid free. He fell backwards as Rock watched in horror below. But, like a cat, Chen was able to twist his body all the way over in midair, and he landed on his feet, rolling instantly to absorb the twenty-foot fall. Without even stopping he came to his feet, as Rock rushed over.