Doomsday Warrior 06 - American Rebellion (3 page)

Rona woke up staring up at the brilliant blue sky laced with spider webs of purple from the back of a speeding flatbed truck. She was tied hand and foot, tightly. And she was naked. Evidently they had carefully inspected the merchandise.

“Red hair good,” a voice suddenly snarled down as one of the Slavers came up behind her. “Here, water, water. Don’t dry up. You are beauty—yes? Too bad you so good—or I would have you. But you are worth much—very much. You have good teeth. Here, we rub cactus salve on your wounds.” He smiled a toothless grin and squeezed her bare left breast, then slopped a blue paste on her and began rubbing it over her chest, nearly salivating as he did so. She had the sudden urge to shout out, “No, no, my name is Rona Wallender, Freefighter,” but bit her lip. They didn’t know who she was. If they did, they would sell her to the Reds or the Nazis for sure. She’d be tortured, or worse. Used to lure Rockson and other Freefighters to her. She would say nothing. Just another slave. There would be no special interest in her beyond her beauty. She would be sold to some fat rich slug from whom it would be possible to escape.

“Where are we going,” she asked the slobbering ugly creature touching the whole front of her body now, his foul breath making her nauseous.

“We going to Goerringrad, new Nazi Fortress City near here. Got ’emselves a slave market there. Gonna fetch a pretty price for you. Red hair, nice long legs, pretty nose—glad your face no got cut. Too bad I poor man,” he smiled with all the toothless charm he could muster, “otherwise
I
buy you.”

Suddenly she felt woozy, her head spinning into that kaleidoscopic darkness that she had seen so much of of late.

“Good, happy juice hit you now. Now you be friendly to men you meet—no more hellcat. You be easy, and smile. That be good for sale. When drug wear off—they realize you tiger.” He laughed out loud, this apparently being a quite humorous idea to a Slaver. “But too late—we got rubles! You go sleep now.” He patted her head, getting dirt on it. “Long trip. Want you to look pretty. When you wake we dress you in harem clothes—lots of silk, thin material, see-through, pretty. You be real nice for auction tomorrow.”

She tried to fight off the drug they had put in her water, but found everything revolving around her at a faster and faster speed. No, she didn’t want to go under again. It was frightening, horrible. She fought with all her strength, but to no avail. Her mind slowly but inevitably sank beneath the waves of perception and into a drugged dreamland.

Three

T
here have been many “Long Marches” in history—Mao’s march to Peking during the Communist takeover, the Japanese Death March for American prisoners on Bataan, the Cambodian march of all the inhabitants of the Asian nation’s cities, by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, into the countryside to implement their “agrarian policies” in which nearly half the country’s six million people died. The annals of human cruelty are filled with marches of death in which the victor’s bullets don’t even have to be wasted on their prisoners. The captured soldiers or civilian populations kill themselves by the sheer effort of forcing their wounded and tired bodies to go on mile after torturous mile. For to stop is instant death—and any man would prefer the chances of survival, however slim, to the barrel of a gun pointing in his eyes and the shrill scream of the slug that will take his life.

The Slavers took Rockson and the 80 or so other men they had gathered, on
their
version of the Death March. The women and younger boys that their other unit had captured had already been taken to the slave market in Goerringrad where they would be sold to the highest bidder—men who would use them for their own “pleasures” until the young beauties were used up. Then they would be discarded like so much garbage—sold into whorehouses or into the backbreaking labor camps where life was measured in months rather than years.

The group of men which Rockson was in was already consigned to the S.S. of Goerringrad. The S.S. Col. Struhl, Quartermaster of the Fortress City, had told Yigmar, the leader of this particular band of Slavers, that they would pay cold cash—gold rubles—on delivery for able-bodied men who could be used to build roads, landing fields, housing. “But don’t bring us any garbage,” Struhl had warned him, “or you will take their place.” Thus Yigmar, riding in a rusting 40-year old Red Army jeep with a black flag of chains around a skull snapping in the wind on the front right bumper, had decided on the Death March as a way to weed out the undesirables. Those who made it were obviously strong enough to work for the Nazis, those that didn’t—well. The weaker died all the time, every second, everywhere on earth.

“Water, water,” an aging Freefighter walking along the dusty road a few feet away from Rockson cried out for the fifth time in the last minute. His lips were dry as sand, with a thick white foam surrounding his mouth. His eyes kept rolling up in his head as he stumbled along. Rock kept leaning over to lend a supporting hand but a guard would rush over and slam at his arm with the butt of his Kalashnikov, screaming, “No help. Must walk on own.” It was a game of ultimate stakes and every player was on his own.

Rockson was near the very back of the file of bedraggled, captured Americans. All of them were Freefighters from Century City and a few of the other nearby Freefighting cities who had lent support. All of them somehow left behind, unconscious, wounded, hidden beneath other bodies. They were brothers in war and wanted nothing more than to aid their weakening comrades faltering on the long march. For some men it is easier to die oneself than to see one’s friends, fellow warriors through countless battles, dying alongside, and be able to do nothing. Every hour or so one of the men, their wounds just too severe, would collapse, falling over on the dusty back road, like a tree whose roots have been cut. Even the slamming of the Slaver’s steel-tipped boots into their ribs wouldn’t make them move. So they were left, without water or shade, to die in the roasting sun, baked red and literally cooked to death before this day came to an end. Within 12 hours of the start of the Death March ten of the prisoners lay along the sides of the road, their lives slipping away like so much dust in the wind. And there was still nearly 50 miles to go before reaching Goerringrad.

Rockson was siekened by the sight of the wounded being left like worthless beasts. He felt a fury inside of him that threatened to explode out at any moment. He didn’t know who he was but he knew
what
he was—a fighter. His powerful arms, his heightened senses, the almost endless energy that his body seemed to possess, carrying him along the road with almost no effort. Even the lack of water didn’t bother him. Somehow, he was different from the rest. There were many things about him which seemed strange. He could almost hear—not the words—but somehow the thoughts of the men around him, the prisoners and the guards. It seemed to happen when he was looking at a tree or the sky for a second and forgot where he was. His body relaxed—then it would occur, the world would start broadcasting out its thoughts, emotions, from all around him. The energy felt like an attack to him and he would tense up in fighting readiness—instantly the signals would vanish. But it was strange. He knew that men did not possess telepathy—yet he did. But when he reached deeper inside for his identity it was like coming up against a brick wall, a steel wall, completely impenetrable.

The Slavers marched them until midnight and Yigmar pulled the convoy of human commerce over to the side of the road.

“We rest scum. Give them water—but no food,” he ordered his dozen or so heavily armed guards who surrounded them. He would cull out the weak, but it was madness to let them all die, they had to at least be given water. Tomorrow those who still lived when they reached Goerringrad would be given huge meals, fattened up, before presentation to the S.S. Quartermaster. And then Yigmar would get the gold. Ah, what a satchel of rubles this crew would bring in.

His guards went slowly down the rows of captured Freefighters doling out one cup of the precious fluid to each man. They drank it down in a second, many of them spilling half the contents in their mad desire for water, water to wet their parched throats. Then they fell into deep dark sleeps filled with nightmares.

Rockson watched it all with a bitter taste in his mouth. He leaned back against a tree, his eyes like twin radar domes absorbing everything in sight. The men around him were already asleep, breathing in harsh raspy tones. But Rockson couldn’t sleep. His mind was awash with thoughts, half perceived images. It was as if the other part of him—the part that had somehow been put into the deep freeze—was trying to make contact with him. It was like hearing voices calling out from the far side of the moon, indistinct, like leaves whispering in the wind. Somehow the combined energies of not knowing who the hell he was plus being a prisoner of these Slavers and seeing the men dying all around him—all pushed him to the point of what felt like madness. He wanted to explode, to grab one of the guards and destroy him with a smash to the throat. He knew how to kill, just the thought of attacking brought up myriad ways to disable, punches, kicks, throws, that he hadn’t even known he knew. But then what? He would get one, two, three . . . and then they would start firing blindly and all these men around him would be dead. He would have to wait, bide his time. And somehow he would have to find out who he was before he exploded in a rage of volcanic fury.

The next morning the slaves were awakened early just as the pale sun hobbled limply into the bruised purple sky, as if it had been fighting its own battles during the night. The Slavers rushed around the sleeping prisoners and kicked and cracked them with gunbutts and boots forcing them to rise to a standing position. Yigmar’s tent was being stowed in the second jeep. When he was ready the Death march started again. And this time the prisoners felt even more agony than yesterday. Their muscles were tight as steel cords from the endless walking. Their chests and necks felt as if they were filled with burning needles.

But they knew that they would live or die by what happened today. And every man reached down into the center of his soul for the strength to get through it. They started along the dirt, single-lane road, heading north. Around them the terrain seemed to be getting richer, more bushes, thick green-leafed trees, lending from time to time their precious shade from the blistering sun. Occasionally a rabbit or absurdly groping groundhog would rush away from the road and into the surrounding dense vegetation as the prisoners came marching up. The men looked at the vanishing meat with wide eyes for not one of them had eaten now for nearly three days. They would have devoured the small mammals raw at that moment, ripping them apart, splattering their faces with hot blood. Their stomachs felt hollow as balloons while the acids of their own digestive systems were eating away at the lining, sending ripples of sharp pain through their guts.

Suddenly it was all too much for one man. He rushed toward a disappearing cottontail, his hands outstretched in mindless hunger, his brain forgetting where he was. Six rifles barked out and six burning slugs ripped into his back, sending him flying forward, his dead face smashing into a rock sending his teeth flying out in a spray of white pebbles.

The other Freefighters and Rockson, surged forward, but the rifles barked out again and two more Americans fell down in the dirt.

“Stop, stop,” Yigmar screamed, standing on the front seat of his jeep some 75 feet ahead. He raised his long curved scimitar, striking as fierce a pose as possible. The golden rubles were slipping from his fingers with every lifeless body that crashed to the ground.

“Come, come,” Yigmar said, grinning a gold-toothed smile at the inflamed prisoners. “Now is not the time to rebel. If you wanted to fight us, you should have done so on the battlefield. Trip almost over for you now. Just a few more hours—you get food, get places to live, work to do. Not so bad. Many have much worse.” He smiled idiotically at them trying to make it all sound like some sort of idyllic paradise. Not one believed him, but the few seconds of time of his words bought cooled their tempers from the explosive to the boiling point. They settled back into their ranks, their heads bowed in shame and repressed rage as they walked along, their ankle chains clanking loudly.

They marched through the day, until the sun at last began setting again, falling from the purple blue sky like a silver gull hunting for darting fish just below the horizon. Those of the prisoners who were going to, had died already. The rest seemed to be surviving, Yigmar noted with satisfaction. He had only lost 10 of the original 80—better than usual.

“We almost there,” he screamed out. “Just hour or two—then food.” He smiled again, though not a man could see the artificially stretched mouth in the semi-darkness. The stars filled the vast skies like a billion little lips all opening and closing, sucking in the waste of the universe. After a time the moon suddenly appeared over a grove of trees, illuminating the road with a merciless light. At last the low walls of the Fortress City of Goerringrad appeared ahead, just as they came over a rise in the road. They could see thousands of lights twinkling in the mild breeze, and could, even from several miles off, hear the sounds of heavy machinery, of engines roaring. The Nazis were working non-stop on building their American headquarters, work-crews going around the clock with giant floodbeams lighting their task.

In their hunger and weariness, the prisoners prayed that they would get to eat and have a night’s sleep before they would be forced to whatever jobs they would have to work at. God knew what their fate would be, though everyone of them had in the back of his mind the surety that he would escape, once he had regained strength, once his wounds were healed. These were Freefighters, not groveling slaves of the work sectors of the Russian cities. If they could just survive the next few days, weeks, they would get the hell out of here and rejoin their comrades in the hidden cities. Only that thought kept them from ending their lives right then and there.