Doomsday Warrior 01 (33 page)

Suddenly Rockson heard a noise, different from the croakings and creakings of the night life. A sucking sound, like something being pulled down a drain. He moved to the edge of the murky green water and came upon an expanse of quicksand. A bearded man, only his arms, shoulders and head still free, was being pulled down into the quicksand pit. He waved his hands wildly, reaching vainly for the shore, trying to grab hold of a branch, tantalizingly close to his reach.

Rock ran to the very edge of the quicksand, testing it carefully with his foot before he advanced. He got to within about six yards of the wild-eyed trapped man. Rock reached into a back pocket of his utility belt and pulled out a fifty-foot piece of half-inch nylon rope. He quickly tied one end to a tree and threw the other to the struggling stranger. The bearded man lunged for the rope and, after missing it on his first two tries, managed to just touch the end with his fingers. He quickly wrapped two ham-hock-sized fists around the rope and began trying to pull himself out. On the other end Rock pulled the cord end over end, his arm muscles straining and bulging as he slowly dragged the man out of the iron-clad grasp of the quicksand. The going was tough; the stranger emerged only an inch at a time. The swamp would not readily release its quarry. But at last the man was free from his hips up. He began slithering across the slimy surface of the sand as Rock pulled.

With a huge slurping and sucking sound, the man’s legs and feet came free. His terrified face at last relaxed into a smile as he realized he was out of the muck. Rock continued pulling and minutes later the man was pulling himself onto solid ground. He stood up, dripping thick, dark, foul-smelling swamp mud, and looked Rock in the eyes. Rockson was big, six-foot-three, but this fellow towered over him. Must have been at least six-eight going on seven feet, and 250 pounds. The man moved his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Just grunts. The man couldn’t make a word. No wonder he hadn’t yelled. The stranger, clad in buckskin clothes and boots, laid a big hand on Rock’s shoulder and looked at him with a deep, sincere expression.

“I’m Rock,” Rockson said, pointing to himself. He pointed at the mute. “You?”

“Archer!” the big man said with a proud smile. He walked several steps to a tree and lifted up a strange weapon that Rock had but a vague memory from childhood of having seen before. It was made of wood and had a stock with a large, curved bow at the other end. The man bent down again and picked up a quiver of steel-tipped arrows. Rock whistled. Lethal-looking toys. The big man took one of the arrows out and mounted it in the center of the device along a narrow shaft. He pulled a steel wire back, making the bow bend, and attached it to a hook just behind the arrow. The man pointed to a tree across the swamp, a good hundred yards away. He took graceful aim and pulled the trigger. With a
thwack
the arrow shot forward as fast as a bullet and instantly embedded itself dead center of the thick tree.

“Archer,” the mud-dripping specimen of humanity said again, pointing at the tree.

“I see why,” Rock said. “I’m glad you’re a friend not an enemy.” The man appeared to be trying to read Rock’s lips as he spoke but Rock couldn’t be sure if he could understand him or not. “If I ask you a question, could you nod yes or no to answer?” Rock asked the question slowly, letting the big man look closely at his lips. The bearded bear of a man looked at Rock and nodded vigorously up and down.

“Good,” Rock said, smiling back. It was hard to tell if the man was mentally retarded in some way or just hard to communicate with because he knew no language. “From these parts?” Rock asked. The man shook his head, no, and pointed with his finger beyond the mountains. Then he held up both hands spreading his fingers, and opened and closed them three times.

“Thirty days. You came from there thirty days ago?” The man nodded yes. “You have others?” Rock asked, the man’s face a foot from his studiously reading Rock’s lips on every question. The man shook his head sadly. He held up a hand with five fingers and then grabbed it with the other fist and squeezed it. Then he pulled open his buckskin jacket and showed a huge scar that ran from his chest down to his belly button. The others had been killed and he escaped with that wound. Rock hoped he wouldn’t meet the thing that got this guy.

“And now, where do you go?” Rock asked. The man pointed due west, the direction the expedition was heading, but wouldn’t explain further. “That’s where we’re going,” Rock said, “and you’re welcome to come along.” The man nodded vigorously and smiled, slapping Rock on the back. He uncocked his bow weapon and slung it over his shoulder.

“I’ll call you Archer,” Rock said, turning to the man as they walked down the mountain together. “Archer,” Rock said again, pointing to the man’s chest.

“Archer!” the big guy said, his voice sounding twisted, slurred. “Archer.” He said it again and began laughing, pointing to himself. For some reason he found it amusing and said the name over and over again, laughing and slapping Rock on the back with the force of a bull elephant. Rock found the laughter infectious and soon he was chuckling too as they walked through the maze of pines and hickories that lined the lower hills.

Twenty-Nine

I
t took them another hour and a half to reach the edge of the campsite. Rock knew something was wrong immediately. The fire was too low; anyway, there should have been two fires going. He put his fingers to his lips in a gesture to Archer, and together the men moved forward in a crouch as silent as snakes. Rock’s heart was beating faster. Whatever had happened was bad. Very bad! He pushed aside a large bush and looked down the hillside at the wrecked camp. Rock knew there was no one there, alive anyway. No voices, no breathing. He rushed forward, shotgun pistol in hand, with Archer close behind, an immense Carter knife, nearly eighteen inches long and glistening like the silver eyes of death itself, in his hand.

Rock looked around. Blood on the ground. Their packs had been ripped open; the hybrids were gone. Suddenly he saw a shape behind a tree. He felt sick. It was Harris, his throat slashed from ear to ear. Good God, what had happened? How could all his men have been taken? They were such good fighters. Chen . . . Whatever had taken them off was human—of that he was certain. Bandits, maybe. The mountain ranges of the West were said to be filled with cutthroat killers who preyed on anyone who passed. Rock looked around the site. Everything of value was gone. But no blood, other than around Harris. Maybe the others hadn’t been hurt—yet. He saw a glinting in the dirt and reached down to pick up a knife. Primitive. Bone handle. Whoever these killers were, they had regressed tremendously. Maybe they were nearby. Rock hadn’t been gone that long—the fire, although down to the coals, had been stoked at least two hours before.

Rock motioned to Archer, who on his own had pretty much sized up the situation. “Ban-dats,” he said in that whiny guttural voice. Rock nodded.

“We’ve got to save them.” Archer looked back and reached up for an arrow. He loaded it into his crossbow and nodded yes at Rockson. The two men took off at a brisk pace.

The trail the bandits had left was easy to follow. Obviously, they hadn’t expected anyone else to be around to follow so they had made no effort to conceal their tracks. Bent branches and the hoofs of the hybrids spelled out the direction as plain as day. They had only gone about two miles when Rock smelled smoke from a nearby fire and heard voices, drunken and laughing.

Rock and Archer edged up to some bushes on a ridge just forty feet away from the bandits’ hideout. In front of a small run-down farmhouse, about twenty men, filthy, teeth missing, half without shoes, sat around screaming and drinking deep swigs from cider jugs filled with home-brew. Rock scanned the entire scene. There—to the right, his men, tied to stakes. All still alive. They looked a bit worked over but Rock didn’t see any deep wounds or blood flowing out of severed arteries. Several of the Freefighters were unconscious; the rest nervously eyed their captors. Chen stared impassively, waiting.

“Let’s shoot ’em now,” a drunken bandit suddenly yelled, jumping up from the porch and pulling out an old, rusted Western six-gun. He walked to the leader, Garvin, a huge man with a face full of scars and sores. “Now, kill ’em now,” he yelled again. “I’m hungry!” The other men yelled out their agreement. “Kill ’em, Garvin, kill ’em now. We ain’t et meat for days!”

The swine were cannibals. He suddenly noted the stack of bones behind the woodpile that fed their cooking fire. So they ate people and used the bones for weapons. Great, Rock thought. We’ve sunk this far. He looked at Archer who stared back. Unafraid. Rock knew he could trust this man implicitly. Whatever happened now, he had a good fighter by his side. Archer pointed at his arrows and then at Rock’s gun. Rock said “When I fire!” Archer nodded, he pulled out eight arrows and placed them in a little wire contraption beneath the stock so that each time he fired, an arrow would release into his firing hand so he could instantly reload. Rock pulled out his second pistol—a snub-nosed, nickel-plated .38. He had decided to carry an extra gun on the expedition just in case.

The leader of the bandits walked toward the prisoners with the second one, waving his pistol, screaming for blood. The rest of the motley crew rose to their feet and, licking their lips, started toward the imprisoned Freefighters. Rock gripped both pistols tightly in his hands. The scum would be upon his men in seconds. It was now or never.

He and Archer leaped over the crumbling edge of the rise, and rushed down a steep embankment about ten feet to the ground, firing as they moved. Rock got off two shots from each pistol before he reached the ground. Two of the killers fell, their chests ripped open, spurting blood. The bandits looked around in confusion. Then they saw the two men coming at them, a crazy-looking man with a white streak of hair across the middle of his head and a huge, hulking one firing some kind of wooden bow. They reached for their own archaic weapons as the two intruders came forward, still firing.

Surprise, Rock knew, was their only chance. They had to down as many of these slime in the next few seconds as they could—before they were armed and realized what was happening. Rock split to the left and Archer to the right, to avoid giving them too simple a target. Rock’s shotgun pistol spoke death again and again. At this range, he was taking out two, sometimes three with a shot. Bodies flew backward as the heavy shot entered their soft flesh from less than twenty feet. Hands and eyes, shattered bones, and spilled guts sprinkled the already-bloody ground.

To his right, Rock could see Archer shooting away with the crossbow. He took out three of them, firing, jumping to the side and then reloading. But they were upon him. The huge man disappeared beneath a pile of bodies, only to reemerge a moment later like a giant from the seas, literally heaving the bandits into the air. He reached for his huge knife and began slicing at anything that came near. Necks poured blood, chests were opened like sides of beef as the huge razor-sharp knife made target contact again and again.

Rock was in the midst of the screaming, confused bandits now. He fired at a mass of charging bodies. Fired at anything that moved. The shotgun pistol sent out hail after hail of death, finding faces and stomachs to bury itself in. Bodies fell around Rock like trees in a hurricane. He saw a knife coming at him and twisted around, smashing his gun butt down on the murderous hand—then he fired at the body attached to the hand and it flew backwards in a spray of red, knocking down two other bandits behind it. His shotgun pistol empty, Rock used it as a club, hitting at anything to his right while he began firing the .38 at the murderers who had tried to ply their trade on the wrong man.

The bandits, never used to a fair fight, their usual policy being twenty to one, were in a state of terror. They didn’t understand what was happening. They were the toughest. They were the ones to be feared. Everyone in these mountains had stayed away from these parts as if it were hell itself. And now . . . They reached for rusty pistols and broken knives and charged. But who was attacking? It seemed like an army! The white-haired mutant was unreachable. Whenever they charged him he spun out of their path and blasted out of the whirl, taking out two or three of them at a time. The huge one was felling their number with smashes of his wooden bow, knocking in heads and breaking necks with each thunderous smash of his weapon. Brown, cavity-ridden bandit teeth littered the dirt.

The leader of the cutthroats, Garvin, saw Rockson in the middle of the barrage of death and saw his own men flying out of it, blood spurting from their dying bodies. Already half his men were on the ground feeding their guts to the earth. His kingdom was crumbling. In a rage, Garvin pulled his own bone-handled knife and ran at the white-haired killer, pushing his way through his own stumbling men. He came from behind, saw the spinning back of the stranger and lunged forward.

Rock felt the wind of the attack, a thousandth of a second before it reached him. He spun his hips around as the knife entered his shoulder, instead of his back where it had been aimed. Rock held his .38 to the attacker’s face, the muzzle an inch from the man’s nose and pulled the trigger. The face dissolved into a flurry of red as blood poured out the greasy mouth. The bandit leader tried to scream but only gargled death coughs. He sank to his knees as his brains began running like undercooked pudding down the back of his head. Then he fell forward, flat on what had been his face and never moved again.

Rock turned quickly and fired again as two of the thugs came at him, one firing a luger of some sort, the other swiping down with a two-foot machete. Rock caught the gunman square in the groin with his last .38 slug. The bandit fell screaming, slamming his hands over his missing balls. The second one brought the machete down in a screaming arc toward Rock’s head. Rockson dropped both pistols on the ground and caught the machete handle as it reached him. He bent down and continued the motion of the attack, flipping the bandit over his shoulder. He ripped the machete free from the attacker’s hand as he flew over. As the man spun round and started to rise, reaching in his belt for a second knife, Rock came down on his head with the machete. The dark-haired skull split in two, like a coconut. The soft, gray brain matter splattered down onto the ground as the dead bandit hit the dirt like a stone.