Doomsday Warrior 05 - America’s Last Declaration (13 page)

“Sergo,” he ordered one of the bodyguards who was already on the phone frantically getting the operating team assembled. “Sweep up the ashes.”

Nine

T
he two freefighters made good time in the Roadmaster they had won in the poker game. Once Rock got the hang of it he was steering down the plains and hills of Iowa like he was going through an obstacle course. The only drawback was the constant booming and chugging of the alcohol engine that took up the entire rear of the car, the small tin chimney poking through the roof and spitting out a constant stream of thin gray smoke. The weather remained fairly cloudy which was just as well as far as Rockson was concerned. There would be Red spy drones in this part of the country and he didn’t feel like walking anymore. If a drone dropped down close enough it would pick up the engine and metal parts of their vehicle and close in for closer examination and then . . . But they’d just have to chance it. Through the thick cloud cover they could occasionally hear the far-off whine of one of the unmanned video-equipped spy rockets—but they would never see it.

Over the next three days they covered a good six hundred miles along the fairly flat salt seas and pebble-strewn dead lands that stood between them and Century City. On the third afternoon they came upon a herd of black furred buffalo, immense and mangy, chewing the thin cover of grass and staring uninterestedly at the approaching car. Rock slowed to a stop and let loose with a few rounds from the front grill machine gun. A buffalo toppled to the dusty ground like a felled tree, nearly three-quarters of a ton of muscled meat. Archer jumped out and with the deft expertise of a tried and true mountain man, skinned off some of the best and most tender meat from the shoulders and upper thighs. He cut the meat into twenty inch-thick steaks and headed back to the car, which stood waiting, puffing out a funnel of smoke as the roadster shivered in neutral.

“Maybe the top of that alcohol engine back there is hot enough to fry up these steaks here,” Rockson suggested to Archer who immediately took two of the bloody slabs and slapped them down on top of the sizzling hot metal of the engine cover. Instantly the blood sizzled and sent out the mouth-watering odor of tender meat being charred. After they ate, Rockson kept on at a dead-ahead course, keeping the sun in view as he tracked it across the hazy sky, a dim beacon behind the curtains of writhing clouds.

The terrain became bumpier and the Doomsday Warrior glanced out the side window. They were low enough down in the bucket seats that it was like riding just inches above the earth. He felt as if he were actually floating just inches from the ground. He could see little bumps everywhere on the ground as if the soil had erupted with sores, pimples of radioactive disease. Far off to the right and left of the speeding car stood two immense A-bomb craters like dead volcanos. But their legacy of radioactive poisonous death still lived on. The car shuddered as it rode over the mottled ground and Rockson could feel his muscles and bones vibrating inside his body as if he were being shaken in a blender.

Suddenly he saw a blurry shape off to the right coming in fast. It looked bizarre, some sort of trucklike top built on a small-framed car body. The high truck looked absurd bouncing from side to side as if it were about to fall off, obviously too big for the frame that supported it. On the top, three men began firing at the Roadmaster, shooting from big-muzzled shotguns that spat out loud puffs of steel shot. The Doomsday Warrior floored the accelerator and took off, angling away from the attacking antique, metal strips ripped from its side, faded green paint with the words “Alfie’s Supermarket” still barely visible on its side, and bulging tires that looked as if they were centuries old. Still, the thing moved and moved fast as it charged toward them, trying to cut off their escape. The men shooting from the truck’s top looked quite barbaric with scars covering their faces and brightly colored mohawk haircuts. Dangling from the sides of the lumbering vehicle was what looked to Rock like human skulls slapping against the metal.

He was slowly gaining distance on the pursuing bandits when the Doomsday Warrior saw another vehicle coming at them from straight ahead—a trap. There was more than one—possibly many more.

“Archer, man the guns.” Archer sat bolt upright in the bucket seat as he saw the Volkswagen Minibus ahead, armed with a giant ramming spear on the front bearing down on them like a warship on a whale. “The gun, man—just aim it forward and fire.” Rockson was too busy with the controls of the roadster to handle the .55 too, as he had to continually feed more alcohol through the flow lever to increase the speed of the car. Archer took hold of the joystick controls of the .55mm poking through the grill of the Roadmaster and pushed the Fire button on top. Seventy-five feet away the approaching van took a swarm of shots dead center in its engine block. The front end erupted into flames as the bus veered sharply to the side. From the back the tattooed attackers jumped out, hitting the ground and firing up at the fleeing Roadmaster with an assortment of ancient weapons.

But the truck was still after them and Rockson had a growing feeling that there was more to come. He saw them—a line of four advancing cars, each over a century old, their very bodies cracking apart, their windshields held in place by ropes, their wheels ground down so that there was just inches of rubber between the ground and the spinning steel axles. Yet they moved, lurching and weaving, they came forward.

Rockson bore down on them. “Shoot, man, shoot,” he yelled to Archer as puffs of smoke began spitting out from the windows of the approaching vehicles. Men leaned out of them, with pistols, rifles, shotguns, firing, their faces contorted in rage and hate . . . and hunger. “Spray ’em,” Rock screamed as he floored the car and pulled the wheel sharply to the left, seeing a space between two cars on that side. Archer pressed the firing mechanism and slowly turned the machine gun across the row of enemy cars. The bullets sliced across grills, doors and tires like a scythe of death, slamming into metal and twisting it apart as if it were being gouged by a giant can opener. Two of the cars caught fire, their fuel lines severed. Rock tore past the blazing vehicles, squeezing between them at fifty mph. The side of the Roadmaster slammed into one of the flaming attacker cars and sent it flying over sideways, coming to a rest on its crushed roof.

But they had barely gone a few hundred yards when the Doomsday Warrior’s heart skipped a beat. There—ahead of them lined up like an armada of steel was a whole army of archaic vehicles. Nearly a dozen of the half-rusted cars and trucks from prewar America, each filled to the brim with barbarians screaming out their death challenge. Four of the trucks had wooden platforms built on their backs, rickety structures that rose a good fifteen feet into the air, atop which small cannon had been erected. The fleet advanced toward Rock, their wooden platforms shaking and leaning back and forth as if they would fall over. Rock could see the men behind the metal cannon loading them by hand with fist-sized shells.

“Jesus Christ, it’s a fucking army out there,” Rockson muttered. “There’s no way in hell we’re going to get through that bunch,” he said, shifting the wheel to the right. “I’m going to tear ass to the right. The second you feel the car move, fire—and keep firing with that .55. You got me?”

Archer grunted, his hands tightening on the firing controls.

“And aim for those tower things—the cannon. You see them?”

“Killll cannoooon, Rocksooon,” the freefighter snorted contemptuously.

“OK, hang onto your balls, man,” the Doomsday Warrior said and spun the wheel as far as it would go to the right, slamming the accelerator to the floor. He opened the manual alcohol feed to full. The damned car might explode for all he knew—but when it came to choosing between death and possible death he didn’t ponder the philosophical implications. The roadster shot forward like a rocket sending up a cloud of parched yellow dust from the ground. For a second they were lost to the view of the attackers who screamed out to one another. They didn’t want to lose this one. He had challenged them, had killed some of their army—the Car Ones—as they called themselves. None had ever done so before. They ruled this part of the world, undisputed. And all those who entered this plain of death were theirs for the taking—and the eating.

As the Roadmaster sped across the front line of the approaching attackers, Rock heard a loud roar and saw an explosion of dirt just ahead. He swerved to the left and began zigzagging. The Roadmaster was handling amazingly well for such an antique—Surefoot had really put his heart into it. The death fleet was closing in fast, changing their angle of attack to try and head Rockson off. But though the army of ragtag vehicles was equipped with an arsenal of weaponry and could move, not one could keep up with the super-souped-up Buick. He made it past the truck at the very edge of the fleet and headed out toward the miles of flatland ahead. But the Car Ones turned and took up the pursuit.

“Man the back gun,” Rockson screamed. Archer looked at him in confusion. “There—there,” the Doomsday Warrior yelled, straightening out their escape path, and moving the car to the max. “That lever, see—it changes the controls from forward to rear machine gun.” Archer reached tentatively forward, looking at Rockson to make sure he wasn’t doing the wrong thing and then pushed the switching lever down. He grimaced as it clicked into place, and then smiled, happy that he had dealt successfully with modern technology—his nemesis with its hidden gears and wires. Unable to see through the steel plate that covered the back window, Archer, keeping one hand on the firing button, leaned out the window to get a better view. The pursuers were right behind them, neither catching up nor falling behind. They had broken their straight line formation and were moving in groups of three or four vehicles in three separate packs. The trucks with the tower cannon were in the second pack and were just getting a fix on their would-be victims. Archer suddenly saw a puff of black smoke erupt from one, knocking the wooden tower a foot back with its recoil. The shell whistled toward the Roadmaster, hitting the dirt just to the front and side of the car. The shock lifted the entire vehicle up for a second. But it kept going.

Not knowing quite what he was aiming at, Archer decided to just push the Fire button and hope for the best. He could see the trail of hot slugs tear out behind them and slam into the windshield of one of the lead cars. The glass blasted apart sending a hailstorm of razor-sharp shrapnel into the driver’s face. The car skidded sharply to the left and slammed into another, the two of them erupting into a single ball of flame. Archer burst out in a guttural laugh and swiveled the machine gun slightly to the side. He fired again but quickly saw that the stream of bullets was going between the next two trucks. Slowly, firing all the time, he swiveled the death dealer inch by inch, until the trail of slugs bit into a truck just preparing to fire its cannon. The thing went off just as the .55s bit into the bottom of the wooden platform below it and the entire structure collapsed down onto the truck. The cannon flipped down at the instant it fired and the big shell tore into the hood of the vehicle sending the entire truck up in a roar of fire and smoke and burning flesh.

Some of the other cars were starting to fall back, unable to keep up the pace, as thick streams of smoking oil streamed up from their exhausts. They were not used to having to pursue their victims more than a few hundred yards before a bloody capture was made. Archer turned back toward Rock and held up four fingers.

“Four,” the Doomsday Warrior said, smirking. “Well, I guess that’s lowering the odds a bit. Keep firing. As some famous baseball player of old used to say ‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over.’ And it ain’t over yet.” Rock swerved to the side again, making the car lift up onto two wheels for a few seconds as he heard another cannon shell scream in toward them. The blast went off just yards away from Rock’s opened window and the hard dirt rained over his face and body. He kept the car going straight, clamping one hand to the wheel, but had to slow down as his eyes filled with dust. He wiped at them frantically, not wanting to lose the precious lead they had gained. But his eyes teared through a veil of pain.

“Give me the water,” Rockson said to Archer, who continued to lean out the window, occasionally ducking back inside as a hail of shotgun pellets flew by, as he fired back with the .55. “Water, water,” Rockson fairly bellowed out and Archer at last heard him and turned around.

“Weee slooow, Roooocksoon.”

“I know, I know—give me the canteen.” Confused but quick to obey even the most outlandish of Rock’s requests, Archer reached down in the back space behind the seats and lifted the canteen, handing it to the Doomsday Warrior. Rock unscrewed the lid and poured the precious liquid over his eyes as Archer stared in bewilderment.

He could see again. His eyes hurt but he didn’t think he’d suffered any permanent damage. In the time that he had slowed from over sixty to about thirty mph, the remaining two trucks and two station wagons, guns poking out of every opening, had come to within a few hundred feet of the roadster. Shots pinged off the back of the Roadmaster, but bounced harmlessly away from the one inch steel plating that covered the entire rear end of the car. Two more cannon shots rang out from the wildly swaying towers. One landed just behind them, the other almost under the car.

Rock accelerated full blast but the roadster kept veering to the right. He could hear the flapping sound of the rubber from one of the tires. They’d been hit. He might be able to keep going but there was no way he could outrun what was left of the armada who were closing by the second. Suddenly he remembered what Surefoot had said about the emergency fuel dump ability of the car. That in case of a crash or attack it was possible to release the entire two hundred-gallon capacity of the alcohol tank in one mighty burst. It was time to find out if the damned thing really worked.

“Close the windows, pal.” Rock grinned. “We’re in for a little firestorm.” Archer grudgingly complied, not wanting to give up the machine gun as he had been getting increasingly accurate at controlling it. Rockson let the approaching attack cars pull even closer. Just as he heard the roar of another shell he pulled the Evacuate lever at the right of the steering wheel. The alcohol shot out from the bottom of the car in a loud whooshing burst instantly rushing out for about thirty feet in all directions, creating a mini-sea of pure distilled alcohol. Rock floored the Roadmaster just as he heard the shell coming down upon them, the lead tower gunner having at last gotten them in his primitive sights. The shell hit the ground just behind the accelerating Buick and exploded in a dirt-heaving blast. The pool of alcohol instantly ignited, sending a sheet of flame into the air just as the attackers raced over it. The flames shot up nearly ten feet, the alcohol burning with a quick but violent fury, and caught two of the attack vehicles directly underneath. Their fuel lines burst into flame and both joined the conflagration. The smell of melting metal and human flesh filled the air. There was but one truck left and it continued the charge forward, the tower gunner feeding another apple-sized shell into his makeshift mortar.