Doomsday Warrior 03 - The Last American (20 page)

Rock pulled the fur she had dropped over them and she pressed close, kissing and touching him. Rock guiltily thought of Kim, but this was not exactly an affair that would last. Besides, he was doing it to help an entire race avoid extinction. After about half an hour, she reached her hand down for him and they went at it again. And again. And again.

In the morning Rock woke to the sounds of birds standing all around him, chirping at him with mocking faces—a naked man lying in a field of moss. Even Snorter, about twenty feet away nibbling on some choice orange-petaled flowers, glanced up at Rock and seemed to shake his head. Rock smiled, remembering the night. He looked around—she was gone—and so was his hunting knife. But she could have tried to kill him—and hadn’t. She needed the blade more than he did, anyway. He hoped he’d “fertilized” her. And he hoped for its sake that it wasn’t a boy.

He got dressed, aching as he rose from the clawing and biting she had done the night before, and felt more exhausted than after fighting a whole battalion of Reds. He headed back to the rest of the party, and, with the bright sun and a path that he found, the ’brid pulled up by the pond with the sun only risen three hours. They’d be able to get a good start on the day—and Rock could detour them around the village of the Barbarahs.

McCaughlin’s warthog-sausage and eggs filled the air with a heady aroma, as did the black coffee perking away in rising trails of delicious steam.

“Hey man, where you been?” Detroit yelled out, seated atop a fallen tree.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Rock said, and wouldn’t utter another word.

Fifteen

G
eorgi, the head waiter at the Elite KGB Commissary on the seventy-ninth floor of the Monolith, walked into the kitchen carrying Colonel Killov’s tray in one hand and nodded to the short, squat chef, Yasok.

“He is still playing with his toy soldiers,” Georgi said contemptuously as Yasok hacked away at a chicken on the butcher block table. Georgi turned on the radio—Russian martial music, loud—and whispered to the chef, “There might be microphones in here. Yes, he is a madman, holed up in his office up there with all the shades drawn and sunglasses on, playing with his little dolls. He was bad before the assassination attempt—now he is totally gone—his mind snapped. I am fearful that he’ll have us all executed if he doesn’t like the soup or I drop a glass or—anything.”

“Perhaps we should—” Yasok, the bald chef began.

“Don’t even say it. There are spies everywhere.” Georgi glanced furtively about the big, twenty-four-hour-staffed kitchen. Yards away an old woman stood, stirring stew. She couldn’t hear him. “He’s started eating again. So he’s not going to die of starvation like we had been hoping. Perhaps, perhaps—”

“Perhaps poison,” Yasok said, almost inaudibly.

“No, don’t even think it.” Georgi put his fingers to his lips. “Look what happened to that assassin who got into the hospital. One of the orderlies told me the man had no skin on his flesh when they took him away.” They both shuddered and went back to their tasks. Georgi picked up the glass he was to take to the colonel and inspected it carefully for grease spots. A tiny speck could mean death for the whole staff when the commander of all the Blackshirts was in an especially paranoid mood. He poured some white wine, chilled to Killov’s specifications, with a shaking hand.

The chef started up again. “I know an untraceable—”

“No time to talk,” Georgi said, loading the tray will Killov’s chicken in white cream sauce and asparagus au gratin. “Got to get back quickly.” He left the hot kitchen and headed down the hallway at a half-run, expertly balancing the full tray after twenty-seven years of experience. He silently entered the chamber of the “Skull,” who sat smiling to himself at his nearly twenty-foot-long curved marble table with veins of red and gold rippling through it.

In front of him were four foot-high dolls that he was rearranging in order. The order in which he wanted to kill them. They were cast from fleshtic, accurate features painted on their faces—representations of those who stood in Killov’s way to world domination.

First was thin, stooped Premier Vassily, and next to him his ever-present black servant, Rahallah, who, according to the colonel’s agents in Moscow, had been the reason the Doctors’ Conspiracy had failed. The damned nigger bastard had treated Vassily with “tribal herbs” and cured him. Rahallah’s features were exaggerated to make them ridiculous—huge lips, and a nose as big as a cup.

The drug-crazed madman moved his gaze onto the next doll—Zhabnov, with his fat stomach and bulldog face. What a fool, Killov thought, his eyes burning down on the figure with a fire of darkest hate. Since the assassination attempt, Zhabnov had risen to first place on Killov’s death list, with an honored place closest to the edge of the thick slab of marble.

And finally—Rockson—or at least the likeness of the only photo the KGB had ever found of the elusive rebel. Even this had been blurred, but the twelve-inch doll did bear a certain resemblance to the Doomsday Warrior—the same square, chiseled face, the same heavily muscled body—even the streak of white down the center of Rock’s black hair. Rockson—the man who had scarred Killov’s face and escaped the colonel’s grasp.

But he would have to wait. Killov lifted Zhabnov and held him tightly and squeezed. “Feel that, fat fool,” the colonel muttered under his breath. “This is how you will die. Slowly.”

The waiter stood speechless just inside the doorway, terrified to come in or to leave. Killov suddenly noticed him, but smiled. He seemed pleased now—after the dolls. A nod from the colonel, and the waiter placed the food before him, putting it down on the marble top without the slightest click.

“That will be all,” the Blackshirt commander said, and Georgi left as fast as he could without stumbling. He didn’t know which he’d see first—a nervous breakdown or a firing squad.

Premier Vassily, Ruler of All the World, was feeling better all the time. Well enough to attend the annual military parade. Rahallah wheeled him out to the viewing stand in front of the Kremlin, where hundreds of officials and generals paid their most obedient respects. Millions of Russians gathered along the route cheered as he stood for the first time in a year and waved wanly. The parade began. Before him the armed might of the Soviet Empire passed in review. Tanks, nearly a hundred feet long, shook the platform of marble and steel, emblazoned with a huge slogan in front: ONE WORLD AND IT IS RED. There were fifty or so overcoat-clad elderly men on the balcony with the premier. Those Politburo members who had survived the recent purges. Absent and dead were KGB supporters of Killov, who had been eliminated. Never in his life had Vassily held such a grip on power in the Soviet Union. Yet never, he thought sadly, had he had so little control of the outlying Empire—America in particular. After a while he grew tired of waving at the parade and sat down motionless in the warm afternoon sun.

Rahallah kept back in the shadows, unobtrusive, the servant. Still, even to have a black on the platform—the others wondered. Rocket-launching trucks, each with ten missiles on top, came by by the hundreds, then slightly larger missile trucks with a single nuclear-tipped ICBM—neutron—to quell dissent in the colonies of Asia, Africa and America. Then came a thousand rumbling army trucks filled with the women soldiers conscripted from the southern provinces. They were lovely, Vassily thought—all blondes. The genetic rebuilding of Russian stock was going well—with, ironically, American genes being bred in. The strong, virile, radioactive-immune American women who were being sent over for breeding were having their effect.

Then came the stomp-stomp of tens of thousands of goosestepping Red troops, their Kalashnikovs held rigidly in front of their chests, pointing straight up. The MKVD police passed in review, as did the border patrol and the newly enlarged and lavishly uniformed Imperial Guard—Vassily’s private army. So many uniforms, medals, blending, melting together . . . the premier dozed off in his wheelchair. When he awoke the parade was nearly over—thousands of agricultural workers were marching with shovels and pitchforks over their shoulders.

“Rahallah,” the Grandfather said, “wheel me out of here and into the private garden of the Politburo—the Park of Heroes.” The black servant did so, pushing the premier down the long ramp strewn with flowers, through a large door and into the golden gate of the park, where birds from all over the world sang inside immense aviaries. There were birds of paradise along the path that ran through the sanctuary, also snowparrots and indigo doves, cardinals and blue-jays, magpies and pheasants—all chirping and clucking in a cacophany of feathered song. Ducks and geese, with huge black eye markings, impossibly long-necked swans, their wings tied back, gliding back and forth on the heated artificial pond.

Here, everything was in order. The Garden of Heroes belied the destruction of the outside world. Vassily could occasionally hear the crowds cheer some display or other as the parade floats came by. But other than that it was as if he were in Paradise. The warm artificial sunlight coming down from myriad hidden lamps, the gardens, the trees, and the birds. Vassily removed a book from under the blanket covering his lap.

“Ah, Rahallah, let’s sit here by the water fountain and you read to me—this—” He handed over the book. The African took the well-worn novel,
Alice in Wonderland,
and began.

“T’was brillig and the slithy troves did . . .” The peacocks walked slowly about the garden, gazing curiously at the two figures. They would move and then freeze, as if posing for a painting. Their iridescent plumage rippled with a thousand streaks of fire, reflecting the light, their impossible large and multicolored tails swayed back and forth as they walked. As if acting out some sort of unknown ritual, they began circling the two men, in large, almost perfectly round paths. Three, four, then five of the rainbow birds joined in walking slowly, endlessly, around the Premier of All Russia and his black servant, who stood amidst the rose trellises reading sonorously in the strange May sunshine.

Sixteen

R
ockson and the freefighters pressed on, at last making fairly good progress. After the quake, the megapedes, and the women warriors—an occasional sabrelion or cloudburst seemed like a picnic. Rock knew they were getting closer to the convention site. He could see evidence that careless travelers had passed this way—tracks on soft ground, a cigarette butt here and there, indications of a campfire that hadn’t been buried. It made him angry—wouldn’t they learn? How was America to survive if people were careless?

No matter, though—there were no drones about, no signs that the Reds had even surveyed the area—too close to the supposed home of the Glowers for them, which was rumored to be to the west, over a range of jagged mountains. Where the Glowers were the Reds didn’t dare show their faces. Rock wondered if the legendary creatures really existed at all. He had never seen them in all his travels. But there were doubtless many things he hadn’t seen. Every nook and cranny of the new America contained some strange life form, some hideous or beautiful mutation.

They hit mountainous terrain again and moved at a medium pace along winding trails through thick woods—pines and oaks that towered into the sky. The air was cool and moist, filled with the fragrances of a thousand flowers. It made them all feel good, after so much sun and desolation, to reenter the living beauty of the country. Even the ’brids snorted and threw their heads around as they walked, frisky, playful.

They had just climbed up one rise and were heading down into a narrow valley when Rock saw the glint of metal in a tree. He reached for his pistol and aimed it at the reflection but didn’t fire. He edged the palomino over to the pine and looked closer—some kind of camera.

Suddenly a voice boomed out, tinny, electric, coming through a hidden speaker.

“Stop! Do not proceed any further or you will be destroyed! State your name and purpose for being in this area.” Rock bolstered his gun and smiled up at the camera. They had made it.

“Name’s Ted Rockson. We’re the delegation from Century City.” He waited, as the camera whirred and slowly scanned the rest of the party.

“Proceed slowly. Take the trail to your left—not your right. Do you understand—to the left. Do not stray from it by one foot.”

“Got you,” Rock said, saluting the camera. He pulled Snorter to the left and led the rest of the team along the almost invisible path. His heart was suddenly pounding—what was it—the nearness of Kim? After so many months—she would be here, and they would be together again. He didn’t know if he could stand their ever parting again.

They followed the pinecone-strewn trail for about a mile through denser and denser woods. They’d picked the right place for a big powwow, Rock thought. No way the Reds could sneak in here.

“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE,” a gruff male voice yelled out. A female voice followed from the other side of the trail, hidden.

“Yeah, freeze mister. You speak English?” Rockson pulled the reins tight and Snorter froze in his tracks.

“I’m Ted Rockson. These are all delegates from Century City.” He leaned around, pointing to the others, who shifted a little uneasily atop their ’brids at all these invisible watchers. A man stepped from behind a tree, holding a Liberator on full auto. He came forward as five other guards appeared from out of nowhere, guns drawn, and surrounded the party.

“Just all keep your hands high,” the gruff, red-faced guard said, moving cautiously forward. “You got the letter?” the man asked, stopping several feet from Rock, the muzzle of the rifle pointed right at his chest.

“Yeah, here,” the Doomsday Warrior answered coolly, not wanting to startle the man. He slowly reached inside his pack and extracted the Langford letter. The man took it, stepped back, and held it up to the random shafts of sunlight streaming down through the canopy of trees.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” the man said, handing the letter back with a thin smile. “We put a special marking on ’em. Can’t see it except if you hold it up to the light. It’s okay,” the man yelled to the others, who let their guns drop. “Looks like this here really is Ted Rockson, damn!” He took off an army-type cap and slapped it against his leg. “Goddamned Ted Rockson—can you believe it?” The rest of the guard crew walked over and shook hands with Rock and the other freefighters. Their eyes were wide with excitement at actually meeting the legendary Doomsday Warrior.