Doomsday Warrior 13 - American Paradise (2 page)

Rockson smiled, remembering when he first had laid eyes on the near-mute mountain man. He had dragged Archer from a quicksand pit, and that was the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship. The mountain man’s home-made steel arrows were a good complement to the other men’s special abilities. Archer had gotten them out of many scrapes with his mighty bow, but the man was . . . unpredictable.

Speaking of scrapes, Rock thought. He was feeling a prickle on the back of his neck. His mutant senses were picking up danger.

“Archer, drop those things, and keep your arrows ready. Men, get on full alert!”

“Is something up?” asked Scheransky, the blond was cross-drawing his new silver .44s from his pair of embossed leather holsters.

“Maybe . . . maybe not.”

They listened for a while. Nothing but the wind and surf and an eerie silence beyond. No bird noises—nothing.

Rock finally said, “Must be a false alarm—let’s get moving.”

Still, as they walked in the slate-colored light, Rock could feel the electricity in the air.

A sound—a noise like the muttering of mad children—arose from the fog. The sound coalesced into shouts of at least a dozen men. Indescipherable, but angry.

“Get down!” Rock yelled, taking out the fog-piercing infrared binocs as he hit the sand. He trained them down the beach toward the ruckus. But he didn’t need the lenses!

They were right on the Freefighters now, six snarling, drooling cavemen, spinning bola-like weapons overhead, which they proceeded to throw. Most of the swirling rope-and-rocks missed. But Archer, who was slow to hit the sand, got entangled in the sticky weblike things. Then, as the Freefighters raised their weapons, they were pounced on by the huge animal-skin-clad, red-eyed attackers.

A knife flashed down at Rock, but the caveman’s blade never met the mark. The beast-man who pounced on the Doomsday Warrior was met by sixteen explosive pellets of his shotpistol. He flew back from Rockson, the burning X-pattern of holes in the thing’s chest trailing smoke.

Rockson sat up and spun the pistol toward Archer who, trussed in a caveman’s ropes, was having a hard time fending off his attacker. Once again Rock fired, careful to aim wide. Half the pattern of explosive pellets impacted on the caveman. He fell away from Archer, his face like raw hamburger. Archer snapped the ropes and pulled his shotpistol, taking down one more. Very quickly, the primitives were shot stone-dead. The only Freefighter injury was a knife cut on Detroit’s left upper arm.

But the battle wasn’t over. A second group, ten immense fur-clad prehistoric men, was down the beach, just watching. Perhaps they had meant to join the attack but now were wary. Their eyes glinted grey in the smeary light of the pale sun, looking like dead, cold rocks filled with only a vacuum, not any soul.

They crouched down and looked at one another, as if considering whether to attack or flee. Meanwhile, the embattled Freefighters clambered to their feet. The 8 foot tall man-creatures seemed to study the spilled bodies of their compatriots on the red-stained sands of the beach. Rockson expected them to retreat.

Instead, one of the primitives made a decision for the whole group. With a snarl he raced forward, raising his huge stone adze on high. His speed was staggering, and Rockson yelled, “Fire!” as he let a whole clip of “X” pellets blast from his shotpistol.

The other Freefighters also laid down a withering pattern of hot lead with their .9mm Liberator submachine guns or their hand-held deathdealers. The cavemen-types were hit five, six, seven times each, and fell in crazy rag-doll fashion only a few feet away.

Then only silence. The wind. The breakers.

Was that it? Rock sure hoped so. Then Rockson sensed something—and whirled. Just in time.

The primitive attackers, it appeared, could be very stealthy as well as fast. Some more of them had come around in the fog, outflanking the Freefighters. There were at least fifty of the bastards creeping from less than ten yards away. They had moved silently, as if they had cats’ paws, not hairy human feet.

“By Lenin,” whispered Scheransky. “How many of the suckers are there?”

“Don’t waste talk, just shoot them,” Rock ordered.

Again they laid down a pattern of intense fire. But this bunch had something new—flatstone shields! Even the armor-piercing bullets of the Freefighter’s Liberator rifles pinged off crude but effective barriers.

“Oh-oh,” Chen commented, “time for more than bullets!”

Rock picked up on Chen’s suggestion, saying, “Shoot your arrows, Archer! Chen—use the explosive star-knives! Detroit—hit ’em with the grenades!”

Archer had already pulled an arrow from his quiver and notched it into the steel bow’s string. He fired the explosive-tipped arrow almost straight up. Rockson, for a second, feared the arrow would catch on the wind and fall right back on them. But it didn’t. It impacted on the sand just behind the center of the advancing group of smelly beast-men and exploded with a sizeable concussion.

The metal shields collapsed forward from the blast, and those primitives that weren’t taken down by the explosion, were blasted by the star-knives and grenades which were now lobbed at the exposed attackers.

“Let ’em have it with the Liberators!” Rock commanded.

The remaining attackers rushed forward waving heavy stone mallets but fell like wheat before a scythe in the .9mm death-storm.

Again, silence, except for one fallen caveman, who twitched and groaned from time to time. The Doomsday Warrior thought it was over at last.

Then came the sound of more than a hundred garbled voices screaming something like “Vengeance—vengeance—
vengeance!”

The sun had burned off more of the fog, and Rockson could faintly see the high, rolling dunes along this particular stretch of beach. And pouring over the dunes were hordes of monster-sized fur-clad attackers.

It didn’t look good. Their ammo was nearly gone, and the army of cave people was running at them with axes and knives and bludgeons held on high, screaming bloody murder.

Now there was another noise, this time from out on the waves. More voices, but not jabbering. The new voices were shouting, “Doom for Invaders. Doom!
Doom!”

Were the Freefighters being hit from sea as well as land?

The cavemen, hearing the voices from the sea, froze in position and sniffed the air. Rockson was puzzled. Who was coming from the sea—and how? He still saw nothing but breakers.

Then, from out over the surf, a set of flaming golden tridents flashed overhead and into the cavemen’s ranks. One struck off a leather-clad primitive’s head and another golden trident solidly pierced through the chest of another attacker. The strange weapons fizzled, and Rock could smell burning skin.

The second caveman still stood, the glowing-hot trident buried in his chest. He staggered forward as his eyes rolled up. Blood came out of his nose and ears. He gurgled some startled words and lifted his crude ax to strike. But Rockson kicked his legs out from under him and delivered a coup-de-grace from his shotpistol.

As a dozen more golden tridents flew over the Rock team at the cavemen, the man-creatures turned and fled for their lives, abandoning their dead and wounded.

The unseen friends behind the breakers now came flashing forward on the whitecaps, riding silver surfboards toward the Freefighters at amazing speed. In all, there were seven muscular, bronze-skinned men on long tapered surfboards. A strange throwing device was still held up in one hand of each surfer while the other arm balanced the ride on the waves.

Rockson said, “Well I’ll be! These guys must be the Surfcombers that sent the message for us to come see them—”

“Kriiiyah!” one bronze man yelled and hurled a trident straight at Rockson. He dove to the side, rolled and pointed his pistol seaward.

The Doomsday Warrior yelled, “Hey stop throwing—or we’ll fire back! We come in peace. I’m Rockson, Ted Rockson. Hold your fire!”

Again the surfboard riders, sliding expertly back and forth on the breakers, let loose another set of flaming tridents. These the men were hard-put to avoid, and one nicked McCaughlin’s left arm.

“Damn,” Rock yelled. “Either they can’t hear me over the roar of the waves, or they mean us harm! Better use the flare cartridges. Fire over their damned blond heads!”

The Freefighter squad switched to flare shells with the twist of a dial on the handle of the weapons. They fired nearly in unison—high. Their red flare shells burst out of the big-barrelled weapons and streaked up over the surf riders, exploding with percussive brilliance.

That put the fear of God into the surfers. They hit the water, spilling off their boards and tumbling in the surf.

Then, over the crashing surf, Rockson faintly heard, “Hold your fire, intruders. If you are not enemies—identify yourselves.”

Rock shouted, “That’s better,” and lowered his weapon. “Keep your guard up, men,” he said more softly. “I don’t know who these characters are—”

The surfers retrieved their boards and paddled them in. Then they stood up, and the seven bronze men, carrying their boards, stepped forward through the waves. Every one of them was tracked by the keen eyes of the Freefighters.

The most muscular and blond man of the bunch emerged from the water. He put his board down on the sand as he came forward from the others. He was holding one of the odd tridents cradled in his arms. He looked, with his bronze skin and long blond locks tangled with seaweed, like some goddamned Neptune Agonistes.

“Who did you say you were?”

“I’m Ted Rockson—who the hell are you?”

The big blond man came closer. His surprising yellow eyes surveyed Rock carefully. Then he smiled a perfect white-toothed grin.

“Yeah, I suppose you
could
be Rockson—you have the white streak in your hair and those mismatched blue eyes.”

“I’m Rockson, alright. Put down your weapons, we come in peace. Now that you know who I am. Who are you?”

“We’re the Surfcombers, man, you know—the ones who sent for you? I’m Chief Knudson, and this here,” he said, turning and pointing, “is Manny, my assistant.”

He motioned for a taller, thinner man with mirror sunglasses on to come over and stand next to him. Then he pointed at the other five men, who wore scant, sea-green swim trunks and nothing else, identifying each in turn. “This is Damian Simley, and these other fellows are Alf and Billy and Tex, and last but not least, old Sammy. We’re pleased to meet you, Rockson.”

Chief Knudson extended his arm, and Rock started to take his hand; but the man slipped his hand past Rockson’s and locked forearms. He shook Rock’s forearm. “Pleased to meet a fellow American.”

“And I’m pleased to meet you, Chief Knudson.” Rock sighed. “I think I can say for all of us, thanks for helping out against those—hairy guys. But after helping us, why did you fire on us?”

“Mistaken identity. We have trouble along this beach. It’s hard to keep our territory intact. Besides the Tragos—that’s the group that attacked you—there are a lot of other primitive folk roaming around the dunes that try to take over this beach. We manage to keep our surf-turf though, since they’re more primitively armed than we are. As for why we fired on you Freefighters—those khakis you’re wearing are a lot like those worn by the group we call the Marauders. They come down here from time to time and steal our crab traps right out from under our noses. There’s a mess of crab traps just yards from here.”

“I see . . . that explains it. Now which if you is the man that reported the Soviets have acquired a secret weapon?”

The chief smiled. “Ah, that would be Murf Cross, our best explorer. He’s back at the beach shack—our headquarters. You’ll meet him.”

“Good,” said Rock. “As soon as possible.” Then he introduced the Freefighters one by one. “This big fellow is Archer—he’s a mountain man and a bit taciturn. The other big guy is McCaughlin. And then this friend is Chen.” The pencil-moustached Chinese-American smiled mockingly as he always did at the formalities. “Then we have Detroit Green—our grenade man and team anthropologist. And last but not least, our Russian friend, Scheransky.”

“Scheransky?” the chief questioned.

“Yes,” Rockson smirked. “Not all Russians are Reds, you know. He’s our technical expert and a loyal Freefighter.”

It was getting colder, and the sky started sprinkling down rain. Archer coughed and took off his hat and squeezed it dry. With his hat removed, one could see his crystal-impregnated scalp. Red and blue sparks occasionally flared in the crystals, attracting Knudson’s comment.

“What the hell?” muttered the chief. “This Archer fellow has a most unusual topside!”

“It’s a long story—a repair job after his head was split open in a fight. Archer, put your hat back on. The sparks will attract birds.”

Archer nodded gravely. “Meee sorrry.”

“Not too long on intellect, but a regular Robin Hood with his hand-made arrows,” Rock said warmly. “And a walking light show when he takes his hat off.”

“Well,” said the Surfcomber chief, “let’s get back to headquarters and out of the rain—ever eat barbequed steamers?”

Archer fairly drooled his way along the beach. They soon saw the long, low-slung beachcomber shack ahead. The wooden rambling structure had a thousand car hubcaps with familiar names from the past—Mitsubishi, Oldsmobile, Toyota—plastered on its weathered walls.

Two

T
he Freefighters and their guides had to bend to get in the low entrance of the ramshackle-appearing structure. But once they were inside, Rockson found the ceiling wasn’t as low as he had expected, for they stepped
down
into a broad, seashell-adorned room. He realized that the exterior made the place look low and poorly constructed, but it wasn’t. The driftwood and scrap outside was only surface dressing.

The room was about 50 feet square and lit by concealed electric bulbs behind decorative—and translucent—seashells, large ones. There were heavy, rough-hewn beams in the ceiling and five or six treelike, vertical support pillars scattered about. The walls, besides being full of shelves containing myriad technical and how-to manuals, were racked with weapons: guns, huge machetes, hook-and-grapples. Plus, there were rows of those golden tridents that had proven so effective.