Doomsday Warrior 09 - America’s Zero Hour (22 page)

“Give up, human.” The grating mechanical voice came from Chrome’s head. “You cannot beat me. No human can. Do you not understand?” His slit mouth rose and fell, a poor facsimile of real lips.

Rockson swung the pick with all his might at the monster’s chest.

Despite the red-hot electrical energy biting out of the delivery end of the pick, and the fury with which it was delivered, the tool did little damage to the cyborg. He swung again. The best Rockson was able to do was keep the metal man off balance. Every time Chrome would reach for Rockson, the man would dodge back a step and then push in again, slamming the business end of the pick up against the shielded chestplate—but only managing to scratch the surface and knock his opponent back a step or two.

“You waste your time, human. Come to me, come and die.”

The cyborg ground his left heel against a rock protruding from the ground. It crumbled to dust. He moved forward, more rapidly. “I will squeeze you into pulp,” he intoned metallically.

Rockson saw some patches of ice, and moved in that direction. Maybe Tinman would slip on the ice.

Rockson dodged the wildly grasping metal arms and thudded the business end of the pick against Chrome’s shoulder. But the cyborg braced, and the weight of the attack did not move him, even though his right foot was on ice.

Chrome reached forward with incredible speed, and caught Rockson’s left shoulder. Digging in, he forced the man into screaming agony. The metal fingers pressed bones, muscles, and nerves together, bugging Rockson’s eyes with pain. The pick slipped from his fingers, bouncing twice and stopping in the snow with a sizzle several feet away. Rockson did not care. The pain tearing through his shoulder was too immediate, too real, to allow him to worry about anything else.

Chrome maintained an even pressure, his fingers never tiring. He did not break the skin, not yet. It would be too soon. He wanted to tear the puny human’s shoulder, crush the clavicle and its surrounding deltoid muscles. But that would all be too easy—there would be no fun in that for Colonel Killov, who had instructed Chrome to kill Rockson slowly.

Rockson’s mind swam through the pain clogging his system, looking for a way out of his situation. Automatically his jerking body thrashed out at Chrome. His right fist struck again and again at the cyborg, became numb. His feet kicked repeatedly. He knew none of this could help him, though. Rock tried to think, to see a real way out. His breath came in wild gasps, the Arctic air tore at his throat as he sucked each lungful in and out, his brain fought against the agony lancing his body. Finally he saw his only chance to break the hold his enemy had on him, and put himself back in the ball game as a player, and not just a memory.

“Shall I kill you now, Human Rockson?”

“Maybe,” choked Rockson through the pain, “maybe
not
just fuckin’ yet, pal.” He put his plan into action.

He hooked his left foot behind the cyborg’s right and jerked with all his remaining strength, pulling the metal man’s foot across the sheet of ice, causing him to lose his balance. The pair teetered for a second, and then went crashing down, slipping across the landscape. The hold on Rockson’s shoulder loosened. The metal fingers closed only on torn fabric.

The instant Chrome fell, Rock pulled away, rolling across the ground away from the cyborg. The pain throbbing throughout his body lashed at him, trying to force him to give up. And before he had even stopped rolling, Chrome was on his feet, circling the ice to finish Rockson off.

Rock dove across the ice patch, sliding to the pneumo-pick, and grabbed it with his right hand. Rockson made to stand, but without thinking began to push up with his left hand. The pain shot through him again, dropping him on his stomach. He bit his tongue as his head hit the frozen ground. Through a veil of wildly dancing lights, Rockson could see Chrome coming around again for him.

“Get up, human. Get up so I can tear your fingers off and feed them to you, one bloody little human lump at a time.”

Rock scrambled to his feet. “I doubt it, Tin Man,” he said with weakening bravado.

Tin Man, Tin Man . . . What was there
about
the Tin Man in
The Wizard of
Oz? Rock remembered: His joints got rusty—so he couldn’t move. Well, Rock couldn’t make Chrome’s joints rusty, but he
could
try the pneumo-pick against Chrome’s joints. Maybe he could disable Chrome even if he couldn’t kill him. Maybe he could break his joints, if not his body. Rockson swung his pneumo-pick and drove it into Chrome’s left knee-joint with all the force he had. Sparks flew from the knee-joint; the cyborg took several involuntary steps back and then fell to his knees.

“Gotcha, you bastard.” Rock yelled, encouraged for the first time.

Pressing his advantage, Rockson drove the pick forward again and again, guided only occasionally by the flashes of fire from the camp. Rockson varied his attack this time.

Rockson tried every joint he could find, swinging at the waist, the knees, the flap plating over the ribs, though his blows were weakened by the fact that his right arm helped but little—but nothing gave. By now Chrome’s uniform was in shreds, only flapping tatters remained. The pick scorched half a dozen of the cyborg’s joints. But though half afire, Chrome stood up. No joint had broken.

Rock backed off, overturned a dozen oil canisters, then dodged around the pile. Chrome stopped short, trying to guess at the man’s plan; hesitation set in. Rockson might be trying to sneak off around the other side of the debris so that he could get to Killov, shielded by the darkness. Chrome’s yellow computer eyes searched the area. Negative. Rockson was still behind the big drums. The cyborg began circling them the other way. It was at the instant that Chrome turned his back that Rockson made his move. Coming back the same way he had begun circling the debris, Rockson drove the pneumo-pick into the back of Chrome’s left knee. Chrome fell on his chest, shaking the tundra, sparks flying from damaged circuitry where Rockson’s weapon had impacted.

Rock struck again, at the rear of his other knee. Chrome crawled forward at tremendous speed on his hands and knees, dragging himself out of the pneumo-pick’s range to keep Rockson from hitting again. Rockson thought he was winning, but the damage had been less than the spectacular sparking indicated. Chrome suddenly kicked back, catching Rockson in the legs. Chrome regained his feet before the Doomsday Warrior actually hit the ground. Spinning quickly, he moved to finish Rockson off.

Rockson rolled over, bringing the pneumo-pick up in front of him to ward off the cyborg. Chrome rushed past where the Doomsday Warrior had just been and Rockson thrust the pick upward, catching it in a chink of the armored plating over the cyborg’s left elbow-joint. As Chrome made to pull back, Rockson jammed the pick in deeper, and then twisted to the left, rolling away from the metal man, jamming the electric cutting edge of the tool into the cyborg’s elbow-joint. More sparks.

The two separated and regained their feet. Rockson held onto the pick, gasping for air. His shoulder was throbbing, his vision blurring from the pain. Chrome held his arm up for his own inspection. The fingers and wrist would not respond, their pulleys snapped. From the elbow down, the arm had been rendered useless. He had been hurt!

“Very good, human. Very efficient. You have damaged me. I never thought to see the day.” The metallic voice drifted slightly, as if Chrome was having trouble believing his injury had actually happened.

“Look at this,” said the cyborg, swinging his ruined arm freely in the wind. “It does not hurt. I cannot be hurt.”

Chrome moved forward solidly, swiftly, his one good arm reaching, searching under those cold, yellow computer eyes.

Rockson stepped back, but could not dodge the running onslaught of the metal man. He tried to bring the pneumo-pick to bear again on his foe, but it was torn from his hands. Chrome fingered it in his still-operational hand, twirling the heavy tool as if it were a baton.

“This was your salvation, human. Your only hope.” The cyborg snapped it, threw the pick to the ground behind him. “Now you have no hope.”

Rockson leapt at Chrome, in a feet-forward drop-kick, throwing all his weight against the metal man. Chrome took a step backward on impact. Rockson fell sickly off to one side. Chrome picked him up by the collar like a rag doll and hurled Rock one-handed into a pile of trash. Rockson slammed against machine parts and shards of broken plastic that grated beneath him as he made to stand. Blood filled his mouth, flowing from the spot where he had again bitten his tongue on impact. Dazed, he stumbled down the heap, looking for anything he might use against the cyborg. He wouldn’t give up, he wouldn’t sink into oblivion without one more try. But Chrome was already there.

Reaching out, Chrome caught hold of Rockson’s previously injured shoulder and again squeezed. Rockson screamed aloud, bleating against the merciless pressure. He slammed his hands and feet against the cyborg’s body as it lifted him into the air, but to no avail. The metal man allowed it, welcomed the blows. Now that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the victor, he enjoyed Rockson’s feeble attempts to do him damage. He turned to face Killov. “Shall I kill him now?” he asked. Chrome could hear Killov’s reply, almost lost in the wind: “Yes, kill Rockson.”

Rockson could fight no longer. The pain overtook him; he screamed into the darkness in mindless fury. Forgetting Killov, even Chrome, he screamed an animal wail of rage, cursing his pain with sound and bellowing, unable to form words or even think. The cyborg dropped him at its feet.

“Pitiful meat-thing,” it began. “You lay in the dirt screaming with your eyes filled with water. I will stomp you like a bug.”

Rock wasn’t listening. He inched to the side. He had spotted a cable just a few feet away sticking from the debris. Maybe it could be used as a whip or something. Chrome seemed to have some unexpected difficulty lifting his foot. One of the knee-joints Rock attacked had balked.

Rockson suddenly felt that strange “mutant’s luck” feeling in his gut—the same feeling that had guided him in many times of crisis. With his last energy he wildly rolled to the side. Chrome’s metal foot stomped the ground where Rock’s head had been. But Rock’s searching hand found something, the cable. He gripped the cable in both hands and, ignoring the pain, got into a crouch and pulled, freeing it from the mound, only to find a heavy block-and-tackle-style pulley dangling on the end of it. Grinning, Rockson staggered to his feet, starting to swing the thing over his head.

“Okay. Now for Round Three.”

Some distance away, Killov squinted to see Chrome and Rockson. Did Chrome throw Rockson down and stomp him? It looked like that. Chrome was an indestructible killing machine, and Rockson was mere flesh and blood, but still he had worried that the mechanical man might not be able to stop Rockson. Damned, the fires back at the camp had died, there were no strobes of light to see anything at all. But all of a sudden there was a light from the sky.

Rockson was running through the snow, doing something with his hands, waving them over his head—no, spinning something. He was attacking Chrome! With a new weapon. Killov couldn’t believe that Rockson was still alive, let alone still fighting. Where the hell was his rescue jet? Killov scanned the sky, fearful now. There—that light. Was that the jet?

Rockson rapidly closed the distance between himself and his metal enemy. He still had a shot at doing some damage. Counting on his luck, Rock spun the heavy pulley hard till it made a
whooshing
noise. He closed on Chrome, bouncing the spinning heavy pulley off the cyborg’s good arm. The metal man twisted from the impact and Rockson struck again, crashing the bludgeon against the shining eyes turning toward him. The pulley sent sparks flying into the night from the cyborg’s right eye, only to be pulled away and then used again for the same duty. The pulley-and-cable attack was swifter than the one he could mount with the pneumo-pick.

Rockson attacked over and over, raining weighted blows on the metal man’s face, trying to get the eyes protected by Chrome’s good hand. His shoulder was just pure agony, but he ignored it. Rockson kept him at bay with the cable and pulley, and the eyes started sparking, then flames shot from them. But the cyborg reached out quickly and caught the end of the cable with his good hand. Rockson was instantly jerked from his feet. Ripping the cable out of the human’s hands, Chrome snipped the pulley loose with his slicing fingers and then threw it at his enemy, missing Rockson’s head by less than an inch. Rockson was halfway to his feet when the cyborg advanced like a boxer and swung, bringing his fist into Rockson’s side.
Cracking noises—sharp pain.
Rock fell, rolled coughing phlegm and blood out. The blow had been too quick, too rapid. The pain knifing through his side was unbearable. Chrome stalked him, carefully, metal feet digging into the snow.

“Rockson!”
he shouted. “Rockson.” His head turned from side to side.

Rock lay still, panting, not able to move. He had escaped the grasp of the cyborg, only to find he could do little more than crawl. He waited for the moment when Chrome would end his life. Perhaps the metal man would kick him to death, or crush his head in his big hand. This was it.

But the cyborg walked right by him! He can’t see me. I’ve damaged his eyes! Rockson realized.

Rockson silently got to his feet, keeping his eyes on Chrome. The metal man turned, inadvertently showing his foe what had happened: The pulley had crushed the metal grids over Chrome’s eyes. Although he was able to guide himself with his internal-movement radar, he could not distinguish one immobile object from another. As the cyborg rushed from one oil drum to another, crushing them, Rockson laughed to himself.

Rockson touched his ribs; the slight touch made him gasp. Chrome turned at the sound. Crossing half the thirty-foot distance between himself and Rockson, he listened intently for any more sounds the man might make. Rockson began inching left. The cyborg followed, probably hearing his footsteps.

Rockson found another of the oil drums. He kicked it over, sending it rolling at Chrome. The metal man tried to stop it with his good hand, but slipped on the ice he couldn’t see below his feet, and was knocked down on his back. Standing up quickly, he scanned again for sounds.