Doomsday Warrior 08 - American Glory (2 page)

Balboni was the first to scream. All ears turned to track the source of the howling—then they saw him. He had bent down to inhale the sweet aroma of an immense pink-petaled plant with dayglow green dots covering it like a chlorophyll leopard. He had pushed his face right up into the soft petals, had rubbed his cheeks against the smoothest thing he had ever felt.

Suddenly petals were closing around him, engulfing his head. Their softness turned hard as tiny spikes eased out of the petals, grabbing hold of his skull and undulating as they began pulling his entire body slowly, inexorably into the caustic digestive acids of the flesh-eating stomach hidden in its roots below the ground.

The paradise turned into hell. The flowers amidst which the Freefighters lay reached for them—tendrils suddenly clawed, spiked leaves slashed madly at them, vines snaked around the ’brids’ legs, pulling at them. Hook-beaked owls swooped down from their perches, their faces not cute any longer but hideous, terrifying—with rows of angled razor teeth snapping at the struggling human prey.

“Jesus Christ,” Rockson muttered as he rose to his feet, pulling Kim up with him in a flash. They were being attacked on every side. The peaceful meadow had erupted into a violent twisting and snapping in which every living thing was trying to get them. Every leaf, every petal, every branch, every piece of dripping fruit was lunging madly at the humans who had come near them. Before the Doomsday Warrior could take a step, he felt a snaking vine wind around his ankle and up his leg. The thing was brown like the underside of a log and dripping with a vile juice which was already eating small holes in the sides of Rockson’s thick plastisynth field pants. His hand moving in a blur, Rockson whipped out his .12 gauge shotpistol and fired a load just inches from his boot into the writhing vegetable snake’s body. It exploded in a thick noxious spray of brown and the tendril around his leg dropped to the ground like a piece of rotting garbage. At least the damned things were mortal, Rockson thought, letting a quick whistle of thanks pass through his teeth.

“Use your weapons!” the Doomsday Warrior screamed out over the bray of yelling men and howling hybrids and snapping birds of every size and shape who flew down from the nearby trees in an invasion of murderous beaks and talons. “Your weapons, your weapons!” Rockson screamed again, running forward, firing at twisting bouquets of roses that snapped out with poisoned thorns and patches of carnivorous sunflowers, whose huge white and yellow petaled heads leaned far forward, spitting out a spray of disabling mist. One of the ’brids went down and was instantly covered in a thousand little arms of green and black vines, its body literally ripped apart, as each tendril dug into the hot flesh with snapping pincers.

But Rockson’s thunderous shots had at least snapped the rest of the team from their mesmerized flailings at their would-be killers. The men reached for their pistols, knives, anything they were carrying and unleashed their own human version of death. Stalks and shoots, tendrils and stamens exploded into a greenish brown slime that filled the air with an acrid mist. Somehow, most of the men broke free of their captors, grabbed their ’brids, and rushed toward Rockson, who had gone over to Balboni. The Freefighter’s head had disappeared into the spotted leaves of the huge meateater, right up to the shoulders. At least he was still alive, Rock could see instantly by the pushing of Balboni’s hands against the outer petals as the man tried to break free. Rockson didn’t even try to pry off the sucking yard-long petals, for they were closed as tight as a Venus fly-trap over an insect. Instead the Doomsday Warrior knelt down and aimed the big muzzle of his .12 gauge right at the spot where the carnivorous roots entered the dirt. He turned his head and pulled the trigger. The foot-thick stem shattered as if cut down by a scythe, the black pulp oozing down into the dirt. The huge stalk and the petals holding Balboni captive fell over and the Freefighter toppled to the ground, still stuck inside.

Rock reached over with his hunting blade and sliced carefully around the neck and face of the captive, working his knife as if he were skinning a deer. But with the death of its circulatory system, the plant quickly released its hold and the speckled flowers fell open and limply down, already losing their shape and color.

Rockson had to turn away for a second, as he saw the freed man. Balboni was a mess. The plant’s inner jaws and digestive fluids had begun to work on the prey. The entire outer layer of flesh had been eaten away, dissolved like a melting bubble. The acid had chewed away all of the Freefighter’s hair, his eyebrows, lips, and ears. Parts of the subdermal system below had been melted into view, and one could clearly see the entire anatomical structure of the musculature of the throat and face as if displayed on a medical school mannequin.

“R-r-oock,” a voice somehow managed to utter from between fleshless lips. “It—got me. The fucker g-g-got meee.” With that Balboni twitched slightly just once and fell still as stone to the blood- and vegetable-spattered soil. Rockson cradled the man’s head, slowly lowering it, setting it softly on its final cushion on the grass. Balboni was lucky he was dead, Rock thought. He wouldn’t have wanted to live looking like that. The plant must have injected some sort of poison into the bloodstream—like a spider—to hold and keep its much larger prey.

But there wasn’t time for deep meditations—not when the landscape was trying to eat his entire force, including the president of the United States. Rockson shot to his feet as the others gathered around him, firing every second, reloading and firing again. They bunched together in an ever-tighter circle, grabbing at the reins of their hybrids who stomped and neighed out furious bellowings of fear. Rockson could see that the entire defensive formation was about to crack under the relentless pressure of the attacking plant and bird life which came at them from every side. He saw a sudden large shadow swooping down and fired straight up in the air. Something burst just yards above him and bloody feathers floated down onto his head and shoulders.

Suddenly he remembered an ancient U.S. Army training film on mine clearing—field-style—that he’d seen back in Century City. A vine slithered in, trying to hook his foot, but Rockson pulled the foot away and brought it down hard on the reaching petals, squashing them into pulp with his steel-heeled boots. There was no more time.

“Archer, Chen, Detroit!” Rock screamed out. “Front and center.” The Chinese-American martial arts expert rushed through the frantically firing Freefighters with Archer, the seven-foot half-mute mountain man, and Detroit, the ebony-skinned grenade expert of the squad, right behind him.

“Get out your stuff, boys,” the Doomsday Warrior said, pointing back toward the way they’d come in. “We’ll have to blast our way through. Chen—some of your exploding star-knives, spin them out every ten feet or so! Archer—your phosphorus arrows. You understand me?” he asked, looking closely into the huge fighter’s eyes as the mountain man was not always 100% in the analysis department. But this time, the barn door of a Freefighter understood perfectly.

“Buuurrrn ’eem, Roooocck,” he said, whipping an arrow into the slot of his wide steel-wire crossbow.

“Detroit—your magnesium grenades—heave ’em up fifty feet or so. You’ll be our long-range artillery—so you’re going to have to take out a lot of ’em!”

“It’s barbecue time, Rock,” the short but ripplingly muscular black fighter spat, ripping two grenades from the twin belts across his barrel chest.

“Go! Go!”
the Doomsday Warrior yelled out as the three men took the lead of the panic-stricken group. Rockson glanced around to make sure Kim and her father were all right and saw them, completely surrounded by his men in the center of the defensive concentration. They were as safe as they were going to be.

Detroit pulled the pins from his two pineapples and heaved first his right then his left arm straight ahead. The two balls of super-concentrated high explosives soared through the air like the throw of a left fielder trying to cut off the runner at home. They hit the ground and lay there for a second or two as if they were duds. Then they both went off simultaneously, sending up a cloud of steaming plant life in steaming geysers.

The team took off, the men pulling their circle in at the flanks so they became a moving wedge, protected on each flank by the ’brids, which were stronger and better able to break free of the constant entangling tendrils of the field’s murderous plant life. Detroit pulled another two grenades and threw them about fifty feet ahead of the first while Archer released an arrow to the right where an entire tree was holding its long spiked branches out and waving them at the fleeing Freedomfighters, trying to snatch something, anything. The arrow buried itself in the thing’s trunk just feet above the ground and burst into a white-hot flame, roaring instantly with a furnace-like whistle. The flames must have sent some sort of message to the thing’s primitive nervous system, as it reared back and emitted a high-pitched scream that the men couldn’t hear—but the hybrids reacted to it with alarm, rising up on their hind legs and windmilling their front hooves at the air as if fighting off an invisible enemy. The flaming tree pulled back, its very roots lifting up out of the ground as it rushed through the field—a blazing bonfire.

Chen kept an eye on the closer of the plant attackers, taking the very lead of the wedge. His almond eyes scanned the growth in front of them, waiting to sense the tiniest movement. There—to the left, 15 feet ahead. He flipped one of the five-pointed throwing knives and caught the base of a clump of beetle-jawed spider plants. A thousand green legs shot off in every direction, severed by the quite powerful explosion of the small device. A swarm of hook-beaked crows with shining purple-black feathers came soaring down from above, a good two dozen of them. They emitted caws of hunger as they extended their three-inch-long talons, their reptilian eyes sighting fresh meat. Two of Chen’s whizzing saw blades came up to greet them, sending out a blast that ripped wings from bodies, plucking the murderous flock’s feathers from their very sides. Half-cleaned birds dropped down onto the fleeing Freefighters, ready for the oven. A branch from a willow tree reached over and tried to grab hold of the Chinese destroyer, but Chen treated it as he would any other opponent. He sidestepped the snapping thick-barked branch and lashed out a sidekick. Twelve feet of the branch cracked and fell to the ground, bleeding a thick green fluid with a swampy odor.

As if suddenly alarmed that they were about to lose their meal tickets, the plant life, the flowers, the spiked groundhogs all closed in with renewed fury. But the humans fought back just as savagely, every man in the unit firing away at anything that came near him. Leaving a trail of green and brown slime behind them, the Freefighters somehow blasted their way back to the edge of the prairie. With the last man out on the soil where the plants couldn’t reach, Rockson turned and looked back. A hybrid had been caught and tripped by a grove of giant hyacinths, their tiny teeth tearing away at the poor thing’s stomach and chest. But everyone else seemed safe. Kim rushed over to Rockson and leaned against him, wanting to feel his strength in her moment of terror.

“You
were right, Rock,” she said softly. “I was wrong. And a man died because of it.” Her eyes began glistening with moisture.

“There’s no time for tears,” the Doomsday Warrior said, cupping her chin and kissing her lightly on the lips. “Every man here could be dead at any moment. We all know that. Many have died. Many more will die. And many of them have died because of orders I gave—and will give again. It’s a war, Kim. Men . . . and women . . . die in wars. So—no tears. None of us has the luxury of guilt.”

Rockson said a few words of prayer as the Freefighters stood around him, just yards away from the edge of the field whose occupants continued to writhe around in a fury of displeasure. Rock couldn’t see Balboni’s body from his vantage point. But if there was anyone up there listening—he would know who they were talking about.

“Take this man,

Into your world

And know that he was a brave fighter

Who gave his life so that others might be free.

And tell the bastard we’ll miss him.”

The Freefighters mounted their still-skittish hybrids, whose nervous mouths were filled with a bubbling yellow foam of pure fear. They were happy as hell to be away from the cursed place and took off at a gallop as Rockson veered the force off to the right. They’d have to circumnavigate the deathfield. it would take them perhaps a hundred miles out of their way back to Century City. But there was no option. Not with a jungle trying to kill them at every step. Within minutes the killer plants were just a bad, bad memory in every man’s mind.

Balboni’s body lay there, the hands twitching slightly from the nerve-contracting effects of the poison that the plant, which had half-digested his face, had injected into him. That plant was dead now, in pieces around its intended victim, blasted apart by Rockson’s shotpistol. But others lived. Others were hungry. From beneath his back, the green grass began shooting up like spikes protruding from an iron maiden. They entered the flesh all along his spinal cord and sank their razor-edged suction cups into the arteries along his backbone. The green jaws poked long curved drinking spears into the still-pumping bloodstream. And they drank, sucking the slowly cooling blood into their root systems. A thousand vampires fed on the Freefighter’s body until there wasn’t a drop left to drink. Then the vines closed in for the flesh.

Two

“P
ow, right in the—?” a hidden voice screamed down from high in a fir tree.

“Kisser,” Rock yelled up. “It’s all right, boys, it’s just me, Rockson, and a few of my friends. Thought we’d stop in here for a little brunch.” The thick needled branches of the tree parted twenty-five feet up. First a rifle barrel, then a face poked through.

“Damn, it
is
Rockson. Didn’t know where the hell you’d gone off to this time. It’s all right, boys,” the sentry shouted off at the other trees. A dozen rifles lowered, a dozen Freefighter guards relaxed and eased back down on their wooden plank stations.