Doomsday Warrior 06 - American Rebellion (25 page)

Twenty-Three

A
fter Detroit had been delivered to the operating room in the Century City hospital, its systems all functioning now with the power restored, Rock headed step by dragging step down to his room. His mind was full with a storm of thoughts and emotions—primarily that Detroit would regain use of his arm. The head surgeon, Johnston, had told him that the black Freefighter would definitely survive—but whether or not he would be able to reattach the limb was another question. They had only been using the sophisticated micro-surgery techniques for a few years and had never put back an entire arm before. But Rock knew he was the best—if it could be done the surgical team would do it. And beneath his concern about Detroit, the realization that Century City’s defenses had been breached by the assassins. Had they been alone so that the secret of the free city’s location died with them or—he shuddered to even think of it—did the Reds now know where they were. He couldn’t face the prospect of another battle like the one he had just been through or 10,000 Red Army troops trying to battle their way inside.

But by the time he reached his room, his brain was too tired to think of anything as he fell in a heap on his bed. Within seconds he was in a deep sleep—a sleep that should have been dreamless for the exhausted seldom dream.

But his sleep wasn’t dreamless. There was a nightmare, a nightmare as chilling as anything Rockson had ever experienced. Rock’s door was locked from the inside—pickproof—with an alarm system. Yet in the dream, someone opened the door silently and entered. A dark figure—a blackness beneath a glowing skull that seemed to drift bodiless above the floor. The skull floated toward the fuse box, opened it and unscrewed the fuse from its socket. The skull slowly turned and approached the bed.

Rock mumbled in his sleep, “no, no,” tossing and turning as his exhausted mind tried to rid the dream of this horror. There was the sound of slow deep breathing, a sort of hiss above the Doomsday Warrior’s bed, as the skull floated toward him. Rock dreamed that he got up and was standing next to the bed, but his feet were stuck to the floor, his body paralyzed. He tried to move but the most titanic efforts only turned him around, his feet glued to the concrete floor as surely as if they had been cast in cement. He struggled for breath, trying to wake himself—for something inside told him it was all real.

But a voice spoke to him, a hypnotic voice, saying
“Sleep, relax, you are sleeping. There is no danger
.” The voice hissed a cold stream of air between its skull teeth.

Something was wrong. The dream was too controlled, too calculated. With an enormous effort of will, Rockson opened his eyes and saw the skull hanging over the bed, a death moon floating in black space. Or was he still dreaming? Dreaming that he had awakened. He tried to clear his foggy consciousness. Everything was spinning, reality, unreality, a fog of incomprehension. Rockson felt a deadly lethargy coming over him, descending like a blanketing cloud over his senses. And all the while, the mesmerizing, droning voice that seemed to reach into the very core of his nervous system, saying,
“Relax, it’s just a dream. This is not real. Just a dream.”

He felt himself going under the power of the dark energy, and rubbed his eyes, trying to keep them focused on the wavery apparition. From deep inside himself a voice cried out. “
It is real; Danger! It has come to kill you! Wake up! Must wake up!”

“It’s real,” he shouted to himself, forcing his body to awaken from the dream that was also a reality. He jumped out of bed naked, throwing the billowing sheet toward the assassin. That broke the spell. The skull apparition ripped the floating sheet from the air, shredding it into tatters and with a single swipe of its clawed hand leapt forward toward where Rock had been lying, slashing the bed in half with a long glowing sword blade, nearly six feet long with a burning red stream of fire arching out from its tip. The bedding burst into flame, the mattress stuffing erupting in a hundred little tongues of fire.

Rockson dove forward and hit the floor the other side of his assailant, somersaulting across the room toward the closet where his .12 gauge shotpistol hung, a new one from the small arms depot. He grabbed it from a wire hook, turned and fired point blank at the skull faced killer. Nothing! The skull, which seemed to float in the darkness of the room lit only by the now smoldering mattress had a shadowy body beneath it, sleek as a leopard’s. The skull opened its bone jaws and laughed a deep echoing sound as if from the grave itself.

“Fool,”
the skull spoke,
“You cannot kill a ghost. You cannot destroy me—rather it is I who will destroy you.”

“Like hell you will,” Rock said, taking a star-knife from the back of the shotpistol’s holster and whirling it toward the deathly figure. He heard a howl and thought he saw a trickle of blood. The thing, whatever it was, apparently had some form of forcefield deflector for bullets—but not for the much slower alloy star-knives. At least he knew the thing
could
be hurt.

The skull suddenly vanished into the very shadows. Then there was a scuffling, like a rat along the floor. Rockson was pulled from his feet before he had a chance to react. Only a snap roll to the side, throwing his entire body weight over, broke the skeletal grip around his left ankle. The glowing fire sword again sliced through the air at him, missing his chest by inches.

The eyes of the thing began throbbing with a green/red fire. Those eyes, the eyes—he was drawn to them like a moth to flame, unable to withstand the hypnotic pull. The wide empty orbs with pulsating red pupils in the center, pupils that drew Rock in like a whirlpool, sucking at his mind. He tried to break free of the eyes—but couldn’t. The voice began speaking again in a slow, irresistible monotone.

“You are me and I am you . . . If you kill me—you will die. If I feel pain you will feel it.”
Rock felt his will slipping away. He took the other star-knife he had grabbed in his right hand, and straining as if he were lifting a truck, managed to raise it and jam it into his own right forearm. The sudden jolt of pain drove the dreamlike state from his head.
There—your mind is clear,
he thought in the first moment of clarity he had had since the nightmare began.
Act now, now!

Rock threw the final circular blade. The spinning five-pointed knife hit the assassin just below the skull—and whizzed on into the darkness imbedding itself in the wall.
How the hell did he do that? Its neck should have been there.
The mad laughter that came back at him sent chills down his spine.

“Mortal, you think I am human? That you can kill me?”
Suddenly three skulls appeared in the air, one right next to the other.
“Which one of me is the reality? Which the illusion?”
the skull laughed.
“Give up, Rockson. There is no hope for you. None. Die peacefully. Go to the next world where there is eternal peace.”

But Rockson just didn’t feel like dying peacefully. If he had to go—it would be violently. He had to take a chance. One of the skulls coming in on him, one of the raised glowing sceptres was real. But which one? Which? His sixth sense told him to go for the center one. He lunged forward—and made contact with something solid. The ghost—or whatever the hell it was—wheezed out air, the breath knocked out of it. Rock wrapped his arms around the thing and wouldn’t let go—even when the huge electro-blade roared down through the air at him. He grabbed the wrist that held the sword and twisted it, making the boney flesh drop it. The blade fell to the floor, digging into the solid concrete, burning a hole, from which it stuck upright, swinging slightly back and forth. His clothes, lying on the floor next to the glowing weapon, suddenly caught fire and in the flash from the flames he could see the thing trying to kill him. It was a man—not a ghost, not a supernatural being. A magician of some sort wearing a skin tight black body suit, with the outline of a skeleton on it—but a man, a human, who could be killed.

The assassin broke away toward the door and Rockson rushed after him, grabbing up the sword from the floor. He took one huge step and swung the singing fire-blade down with all his might. The blade entered the killer’s skull and continued down through his body, exiting from the groin and continuing its downward stroke until it was buried sideways in the floor. The assassin’s body, cleanly split in two spouted a wall of blood and fell to both sides, all the inner organs, the heart and lungs flopping out onto the floor where they writhed and pulsated like fish out of water. Then all was once again silent. Rock felt himself growing dizzy and glanced over to see that his burning clothes had set the bedsheets and bureau on fire. He felt himself passing out and somehow managed to crawl on his hands and knees toward the door, which he somehow pulled open. The smoke alarms in the hall went off just as he passed out.

When he awoke Rona was standing next to him holding his hand. He was lying in a hospital bed, the stiffly starched sheets smooth and cool against his aching flesh.

“How do you feel?” she asked softly. He pressed her hand.

“Fine,” he said weakly, but he sounded hoarse, his throat burned.

Dr. Johnston walked over, hearing him speak. “I’m glad to see you’re back among the sordid world of the living,” he smiled. “You really do have nine lives. I saw the man you killed. And the fire squad had a hell of a time putting out that fire. It consumed the entire room before they extinguished it. You’ll have to tell me what the hell happened in there.”

“Some other time,” Rona said firmly.

“Yeah,” Rock joined in. “Some other time. Say doc, could we—Rona and I have a little privacy.”

Doctor Johnston whistled: “Well, it might be the best medicine—something to get your blood going—clear out your passages. I’ll write out a prescription of “Do Not Disturb” and put it on the door.” He turned and left the room as Rona followed closely behind, locking the door as soon as he was gone. She turned and stripped off her clothing as she made her way slowly, seductively, back to Rock’s bed.

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