Doomsday Warrior 11 - American Eden (16 page)

“What was that?” Rona asked.

“There’s your answer,” Rockson declared, pointing back toward where they had come from. There was smoke and dust exuding from the crevice they had entered the cavern from.

“The entranceway to Death City has been blown up,” Detroit surmised grimly.

“There’s no turning back now,” McCaughlin stated flatly “It’s forward or die.”

They proceeded on their way, on a sloping but secure floor of limestone. It was a beautiful underground vista opening before them, a limestone cavern, with stalagmites of every shape and color—they were amazed at the beauty of the delicate formations when they shone their lights on the dim shapes.

All seemed well, and then the pleasantly cool temperature rose. It became quite warm. “Some sort of hot lava bed perhaps, ahead.” said Scheransky, an expert on such matters.

“I sure hope this is the right cavern,” Rona said.

No one commented on that hope. It had to be the right cavern. Or they were dead.

The air became fetid with sulfurous fumes, but was still breathable. They unclicked their flashlights as the light of a bubbling magma stream off to their left illuminated the way for another half mile. Then the air and temperature returned to normal. “Good thing that stream of hot lava wasn’t in our way,” Detroit said. “I’m not much for fire walking.”

Now instead of heat, it was cold—bitter cold. And the pebble-littered path among the rock formations descended steeply. It was cautious going, each Freefighter helping the next twist and turn down the escarpment. Worse, here and there were human bones—skulls with huge dead eyesockets, fragments of clothing of the twentieth-century variety.

“No one has to be told to keep alert, do they?”

At Rockson’s suggestion, they went single file. “I sure wish we had some rope—I don’t like groping in the—” Rock stopped in his tracks. The lightbeam from his flashlight had reached some object ahead. A big hump of rock. It stood out on the flatness that lay, thankfully, just ahead. Their steep, dangerous descent was over.

They came down one by one to the flatness. Then onward they marched, braving whatever would come before them. After all, it was incredible that they had gotten as far as they had—perhaps Rockson’s mutant luck would take them all the way to Eden after all, and thence to a safe return to Colorado.

Rona had swallowed some of the pain pills and antibiotics from Chen’s belt-pouch supply of medicinals. She was keeping up, despite her injuries.

“That landmark, guys, let’s head for it.” Rock said, referring to the hump of rock about a hundred yards ahead. “We’ll climb atop it and take a look around, combining all our lights.”

The walk to the rock hummock took no time at all. They found it to be about a hundred feet high. Steep, but walkable. When they reached its rounded summit, their combined lights could find the cavern ceiling above, about another hundred feet up. It was studded with long color-radiant crystal stalactites. Rockson took another look at his special compass. “We’re still on track. Must have come a third of the way, and there hasn’t been any monsters,” he reassured.

“Still, it’s a big cave, and we have a way to go,” Detroit said.

Rockson had the party play their lights over the inky distance. Finally he saw something other than a smooth floor. Something white—another long hill of some sort. “Might as well head that way,” Rock said, “it’s almost due south. It looks like it’s man-made.”

Again into the lower darkness they plunged. They came to the white object. It wasn’t a hill, it was a handmade wall of immense stones. Atop the ten-foot wall, which went on into the darkness in both directions, completely cutting off their trek, there were writings. And a cryptic set of drawings. The words were in Spanish.

Detroit played the torch up to the dusty script. “Yes, it’s Spanish. I’ll translate. It says, ‘Beyond here dwell the ones whose mere whispered words destroy the mind. Better to kill yourself now than to proceed through these halls and have your mind tortured.’ It’s signed ‘Father Serra.’ ”

“I’m for turning back,” Danik said, with a distinct tremble in his voice.

“And go where?” Scheransky retorted.

“What the hell does that warning mean?” McCaughlin asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Rock, “but the inscription is really old and the dust on the floor has no footprints in it. This way has not been entered for decades, maybe even for centuries. Perhaps it was written by some early explorer who somehow got into these deep caverns. There might have been some exits to the surface long ago. But the wall was built by many hands. And machinery. Whatever is on the other side, well, it might be dead by now. In any case we’re climbing over.”

“Hold on, guys,” Detroit said. He had wandered down the wall a bit. “There’s more wording here—something about—” he rubbed the stones with his hands, “something about ‘the Whisperers use the power of your own mind against you . . . what is a nightmare becomes real. Guard well your mind but no matter how you resist, the madness comes . . .’ That’s all I can make out. And by the way there’s another skeleton down here—he has a chisel in his hand. I’d say this fellow made the inscription.”

“Doesn’t anyone want to go back?” pleaded Danik.

His plea was ignored.

“All of us should remember our meditative training,” Chen admonished. “There is the power of the
chi
, the inner force within, to protect us. Let us be brave and confident.”

“Chen is right, we will proceed.” Rockson said, starting to drive the mini mountain-climbing pitons he’d brought along in his beltpack into the wall with his baton handle. When he had climbed halfway up, he had Detroit pass the reluctant Class Act up and put her atop the wall. Detroit climbed up and stood on the two-foot-wide top with the dog, scanning the darkness with the electron binoculars, his rifle ready to protect them all. Rockson climbed down the other side, putting more of the pitons in the wall to accomplish that. The other Freefighters were over in a minute, using the strong metal mini-spikes as hand- and foot-holds. Detroit handed the heavy wolf-dog down, and then climbed down himself.

Class Act ran forward in the darkness, sniffing and growling softly.

The Freefighters moved off behind the canine mutant, guns ready. All except for Archer, who had his crossbow out and the biggest steel arrow notched.

“Wait,” the frightened Edenite implored, “I’m coming.”

Smokestone muttered, “I sense something. The dog is right to growl. There is a presence . . .”

The party had no choice but to move on, though with heightened trepidation. They passed bizarre stalactites, twisted funnels tapering to a sharp point fifty or sixty feet above them, a veritable sea of giant pinpoints. The air was freezing now, the ground beneath them slippery with frost. And there was a new element—sounds.

“Is anybody breathing funny?” Detroit was the first to ask. They all said they were breathing the same as always.

“Perhaps.” suggested Chen, “it is merely an echo from the stalagmites.”

“No, I definitely hear some funny breathing,” Detroit insisted, stopping again after another hundred paces. “And I hear—voices—over there.” He shot his beam to the left, and their beams followed. Nothing. Just oddly shaped gray-blue rocks.

A case of nerves?

They moved onward. They left the flat plain; the way was now inclined upward. “We’re halfway,” Rock muttered.

Detroit Green, a man of easy mind, relaxed and always optimistic, was surprisingly the first to fall under the spell of the deadly illusions created by “the Whisperers.” He fell into the dream easily. First there was just a dull hum, an electricity in the dark cold air of the underground passage. It was just the whisper of a gentle soft voice, a breeze, the hint of fingers tracing over the forehead. And with that slight mental breeze, cold soft fingers reached into his mind. Not with horror. Not at first. Just gentle pleasant memories.

Thus the unseen beings, the Whisperers, that created the illusions were able to painlessly enter Detroit’s mind undetected, unopposed. He had steeled himself for horror. And there wasn’t any.

He was suddenly basking in the warm sunlight of a gentle spring day near Century City. Detroit Green saw not the darkness of the cavern, felt not its icy wind. Instead he was in the verdant forest of poplars and cottonwoods. The leaves on the trees overhead made the sunlight flicker in his eyes as he walked unafraid and happy toward his loved ones. He had a nice musk deer he had killed draped over his shoulder—he was happy.

And now that the Whisperers had entered his mind by this devious trick, the images changed. The deer became a desiccated rotted corpse, foul and crawling with worms. He shouted and dropped it. He saw the trees around him wither, and the leaves rot off and fall in a cascade of dank death. The sky opened up with blacks snow swirling down, burning his skin . . .

The Whisperers were picking up his most fearful thoughts—like black acid snow—and projecting them back on him.

Detroit tried to throw it off, started chanting his words of protection, as Chen had taught. He caught a glimpse for an instant of his real surroundings. Detroit stood still. He tried to gain control. He stated, “No-no, I am here, I am in the cavern—” But the brave Freefighter, despite his best effort, couldn’t hold the thought, and reality slipped away again.

He was suddenly in boot camp, a raw recruit to the Freefighter cause. A bull-necked DI jabbed him in the belly with a finger and said, “All right, Green, you have to prove yourself. Jump down this little hole. It’s not deep. You can do it. The others did. They’ll laugh at you if—”

“I can do it, I can . . .” Detroit prepared to jump. It wasn’t deep—just six or seven feet. It was easy.

“Hey, what is Detroit up to? What’s he doing over there by that crevice?” Rock said, shining the light over to the man.

“The illusions have him,” Chen shouted. “Quickly, let’s get him.”

Detroit was poised on the edge of the cliff. The two Freefighters ran to him, and Rockson tackled him and rolled his friend from the abyss. Detroit struggled with the Doomsday Warrior, screaming and tearing at the man as if he were an enemy. He saw not his compatriot trying to save him, but rather the snaking tendrils of a bloodfruit plant. In the illusion projected by the Whisperers, the tendrils had locked around his legs and wouldn’t let go. He searched for his knife, but Chen seized it away from him.

Rockson got Detroit in a hammerlock, and as Rona slapped his face repeatedly, the illusion-mad Freefighter gradually ceased his struggle and came around.

He sat there exhausted, his chest heaving. “Rock, if you could see what I saw, you’d understand. Sorry, I—”

Rockson slapped him on the back. “Forget it. But tell us how it got you—weren’t you guarding?”

Detroit told Rock and the other how it had used a gentle, pleasant memory to get into his mind.

“So that’s what happened. Everyone—keep counting or saying a mantra as you walk, don’t reminisce about anything, don’t let your minds wander.
Now let’s get out of here.”

They went on. Rockson felt the subtlest of mental attack. It was a pleasant thought about sitting in the restaurant at Century City and ordering a drink of—
no
. He fended it off, shutting his mind like a steel spring on it—it passed.

Rona broke stride momentarily, then she too threw it off. One by one they were tested and found not wanting. Thanks to Detroit’s warning.

But with Scheransky it was a different story. Scheransky had trouble remembering his mantra, so he counted. One-two-three. It worked well for a time, his mind didn’t wander, he was keeping up with the others. Perhaps his lack of deep meditative training, he had trouble with such things—didn’t matter. He would be all right. But that wasn’t the case.

They had gone perhaps another three hundred yards in the darkness, when Scheransky suddenly heard his voice, his counting of numbers in Russian, suddenly change to the voice of another man. It was the voice of a guard, a KGB guard. He was a child standing in the snow of the Gulag Reception Station. He was next to his father, a proud prison official. And the counting was not of footsteps in the dark cavern, but the counting of half-naked prisoners walking by him.

Each time a prisoner walked by, his father made a mark in a little notebook. It was so long ago. It was the day that Scheransky most wanted to forget. The day that haunted him.

The Russian’s most dreaded memory was buried deep in his unconscious childhood memories. But the deeper the fear, the more hidden it was, the easier it was for the Whisperers to use it . . . and the more horrible and real it seemed when it came to mind.

There he was in the cold winter darkness of the gulag. And there was a purge going on, the sixth in a year. In the Kremlin, the Malenkov forces were out, and the Dzernoviks’ faction was in, meaning new prisoners were arriving by the trainload—prisoners who had endured month after month of torture already at the hands of the KGB.

And as the faceless political prisoners walked by, one was not anonymous. One, just one, was not a thing to be reviled.

“Momma.”
Scheransky gasped. “What are you—”

The woman, number 412, wore a torn and ragged filthy striped robe. She had bare feet, blood in the cracks of her frozen toes, staining the snow beneath her. She stopped, looked glazed at him, looking as if he were a rock or building.

“Momma, it’s me.” He turned to his father, pulled on his arm, “Poppa, it’s Momma, it’s her—why is she here with the guilty? Why is she dressed like this, why is she with the prisoners?”

His father’s face was ashen, his swollen chest suddenly deflated. His black beady eyes grew wide with horror. It was her. “I cannot do anything,” he whispered close to the boy’s ear, and he dragged little Totu Scheransky away. The boy Scheransky was screaming, “Momma, Momma.”

“Shut up, stupid,” his father insisted, “she is not your mother—not anymore. She is a traitor, I don’t know what she did, but she did it. And we don’t know her . . .”

“But Momma—”

His father slapped him. He fell face first in the snow and he heard the
crunch crunch crunch
of the naked feet of the prisoners walking listlessly across the snow toward the unheated confinement building.