Doomsday Warrior 16 - American Overthrow (19 page)

Suddenly the Chinese master whipped out his right foot hard into the groin of the thing. Either it didn’t have one, or it was covered with rocks, for the blow hurt Chen more than the recipient. He pulled back and snapped out again against a well-known pressure point on the hip. The blow should have dropped a hippo, but again it was like kicking at the side of a mountain. The thing looked down with a grin of violent intention as saliva dribbled down over Chen’s head. “That the best you do, little one?”

Even as he winced in disgust and pushed off his legs to get the hell out of there fast, the giant reached down with one of its immense hands and caught Chen at the shoulder. It squeezed and for the first time Rock could recall the Chinese Freefighter made an expression of pain. The other arm descended and wrapped around his throat. Chen, who was never at a loss for a move, was completely wrapped up by the grizzly-sized assassin. He tried every trick in the book, ripping at the thumbs, kicking down to the instep and knee. But none of it mattered an iota.

He had never felt so powerless in his life. It was like trying to wrestle Godzilla. And suddenly he felt even more humiliated, as the bad-breathed giant lifted him right up off the plastic grass and held him in the air as if examining a strange insect he’d caught. Then he leaned forward and opened his huge jaws at the back of Chen’s neck, preparing, apparently, to take a rather large bite.

Rockson suddenly came flying out from behind an artificial bush and leaped up with everything he had. He rose up as if trying to set a new high jump record. Suddenly his right foot snapped out hard with all the momentum of his hurtling body behind it. The blow caught the giant right on the ear just as he was about to snap down on Chen’s spinal cord.

And
this one,
he felt. Rock could see that even as he soared past the thing. The huge head shook like a punchdrunk fighter and the eyes rolled around in their sockets. The killer opened his arms and staggered sideways.

Chen seized the opportunity and dove, making a ten foot arc through the air before he landed in a roll on the ground. The giant kept going sideways, like he was seasick and then suddenly toppled over. Rock’s kick had done some real damage.

“Hey! I really owe you on that one,” Chen grinned over.

“It’s not over ’til the Fat Lady
dies,”
Rock said as he noticed the creature rising up again. “And now he’s really mad.” Both Freefighters gulped hard. It had previously looked positively beneficent compared to its snarling, red-faced rage now. Blood flowed down the ear onto the neck but it didn’t touch it or seem to notice. Just animal rage that they had dared hurt it. Like a flea inflicting a painful bite.

“Now die!” it screamed the words as it rushed forward.

“Circle again, all the way around,” Rock shouted. “We’ll use our speed and—” And
what,
he had no idea. It came in flying like a tackle of the old Chicago Bears, this time pursuing Rockson, as he’d had the balls to hurt its head.

Rock just tried to stay one jump ahead of it, jumping over logs, sliding atop boulders set in the ground all around them. But the damned thing was always right behind him, fast, and keeping up the pace. Whoever said that weighing over 500 lbs. made you slow hadn’t been around the gym when this boy was doing his laps.

Suddenly he felt the hot foul-breath of the thing on him just as he was jumping from one boulder to another across a concrete-encased stream. The giant was all over him as he tackled him in mid-air. They both went flying to the ground, with Rockson being sandwiched to the cement by the entire weight of the thing. He heard a few bones crack in his ribcage, and felt a tremendous pain. Even more when the red face looked down and when steel-like fat fingers began to choke him. He tried to force the hands off any way he could but it was all useless. Every trick, every pressure jab, weren’t even noticed by this son-of-a-bitch.

Suddenly a piece of material was thrown around its throat. The band tightened and instantly the giant was turning red himself as both hands left Rock’s neck and lifted to his own throat. Chen was yelling. When Rock’s ears unpopped he heard, “Slide out Rock, fast, I don’t know if I can hold him long. He’s strong as an elephant.” Rockson didn’t need any prodding and slid away, rolling end over end like a barrel.

“I’m out!” he screamed so Chen wouldn’t stay on the reins any longer than he had to. For already the giant was up and shaking at the flea behind him who had managed to coil ripped material from his burlap gladiator outfit.

As soon as Chen saw Rock was clear he let go of the material and kicked off with both feet on the creature’s broad back. The push took him a good twenty feet, out of range of the man-thing which suddenly turned ripping at the air with those five foot long arms. He was really,
really
mad now.
No more
Mr. Nice-Giant!

“What the hell, Rock?” Chen exclaimed with exasperation as both men stepped back, searching desperately around. “You’re the boss, I’m stymied on how to even dent this demon,” the Chinese Freefighter said, his almond eyes tight, unsure.

“That tree,” Rock said suddenly, as he scanned frantically all around them. “If we can break it off, we can use it as a spear, slam the fucker right in the gizzard. That should do some kind of damage.”

They both leaped to each side of the fake aluminuplastic tree about ten feet high, with plastic branches drooping down the sides. Like a model railroad set’s tree, only grown to monstrous levels.

They placed their hands a foot apart as if they were choking up on a baseball bat, and then pulled hard. Only two men possessed with such strength and desperation could have ripped the foot thick plastiwood base from the ground where it was cemented in. They both let out grunts as the “tree” came free and stumbled forward a few feet before regaining control of it.

“Let’s go hunting,” Rock shouted to Chen as the giant came bearing down on them from about twenty yards off, getting up a full head of steam. It was wipeout time. They turned the pointy top of the tree down and aimed it at about chest level. The plastic top leaves hid the metal tip. Luckily.

“Hold back until the last second,” Rock shouted as they charged toward the thing, “so it can’t bat it away.” In his peripheral vision Rockson caught everyone in the enclosed balconies above rising to their feet as they watched in stunned disbelief the battle unfolding.

It was like they were knights at a joust, Rock and Chen carrying the pointed tree, pushing it forward with all its fake plastic branches flapping around. The giant suddenly dove forward, as if trying to come down on them, on the tree, on everybody. And Rockson and Chen thrust their end up with everything they had.

There was a loud wet crunching sound and they couldn’t see for a moment through the fake branches what had happened. But the killer was stopped in his tracks and was standing there with no face. The end of the tree had gone right through his left eye, and proceeded out the back of its head.

It now staggered backward, faceless, brains coating the plastic branches. So powerful was the man-thing that it took a good twenty seconds to even realize it was dead. Then the whole bloody mess fell in a quivering heap to the astro-turf floor.

Rockson raised his hand to the officers above, looking directly at General Hanover who didn’t look too pleased about it all. He made the V-for-Victory sign.

“We won, now your
promise,”
Rock screamed, shaking his fist like he was ready to come up there and take the bastard out himself. “Let us go, along with Langford and Kim. You gave your officer’s vow in front of your men!”

“I lied,” General Hanover laughed, and Rockson could hear his words over some sort of P.A. system. “And my men don’t dare do a thing about it, I assure you. I had vague thoughts about saving you so you could see my marriage ceremony to Kim, and see the President himself in a tux holding flowers. But I see you’re too dangerous.” Hanover turned to a subordinate and said, “Gas them. Class D.”

Rock knew what that meant; joining the ranks of the mindless.

“And give them a
good
dose, a little extra, so there’s nothing left up there. We’ll use them for—shoveling shit!”

The officers around him laughed loudly, and General Hanover beamed. The guards came in and Chen and Rock again looked at each other. But a lead-spray from a dozen submachine guns right at their feet dissuaded them.

They were shackled from behind and led back out of the Games-course, through a hidden side door built into the wall. It took only a minute to reach a room about twenty by twenty with ten chairs inside. The chairs were almost like barber’s chairs, only much nastier looking, with straps all over them and tubes and junk reaching into them.

They were thrown into the seats, and before they could make a move had been shackled down, everywhere. Houdini would have had a hard time getting out. And Rock didn’t even belong to the magician’s union! Helmets were lowered down like a woman’s beauty parlor and then sealed, so they were airtight.

“If I don’t see you again—with
this
brain,” Rock shouted through the mask to Chen, “it’s been a good friendship. Proud to have known you.”

“Ditto,” was all the Chinese Freefighter muttered. Suddenly there was gas flowing into the helmet. They could hear it and after a few seconds they could smell it too, faintly. The smell of burnt almonds. He knew that with just a few breaths, he was gone to the world as Ted Rockson forever.

Goodbye Rockson, hello Shit-Shoveler No. 6,666!

Twenty-Two

R
ockson held his breath as long as he could. At first it wasn’t hard, the lungs expanded to their fullest capacity, to keep it all in. In his mind, he had crazy thoughts, as men sometimes do when death—or worse—is just seconds away. Images of his life spinning around in front of him in a merry-go-round of shadows and light. But mostly for some reason he thought about the air. The air before the gas mixed with it. How sweet and clean and like crystal spring water it tasted in his throat and lungs. Why had he never tasted it before? The taste of air is the taste of Nirvana. Where had he read that, heard that? Chen probably, or an old . . .

But Rockson knew he was just bullshitting himself and fate itself. Trying to remember everything, trying to think any thought to avoid the reality of it all. That he was going to have to breathe soon. But he
wouldn’t
breathe. How about that? He goddamn well wouldn’t. He’d hold the fucking air forever, recirculating it through him as if through a self-circulating pump. He didn’t need air. He didn’t even
want
air.

Not true!

Then he sucked in hard, knowing as he did so that it was all over. The gas had a foul taste to it and burned his throat and mouth. He could feel it oozing through his lungs. It hurt, with a strange throbbing kind of pain as if all his capillaries were exploding. And every second it circulated more into his cells, his heart, his brain, filling them with its noxious molecules. He felt himself sink a little deeper into the darkness, the mindless shadows that awaited there. He knew that his second breath would be the last one he’d ever remember.

Suddenly there were noises, voices screaming which jarred him even through his befuddled senses. He shook his head within the gas helmet trying to not go under.

“Back off, slime, or you’ll eat one of these grenades,” a voice was screaming wildly. Rockson knew the voice, it was, was . . . He searched through his mind which felt as plastered as if it had just drunk a gallon of tequila, without a chaser.

“I said
move it,
Hitler’s little helpers,” the voice shouted again with tremendous rage in it.
Detroit!
It couldn’t be— Could it?

“Hold it in there, Rockson, hang on, pal,” the voice now shouted through the fog of the Doomsday Warrior’s half gassed brain. “Getting you out of here, Rocky Boy.”

Suddenly the gas helmet was being lifted from his head and he took huge gulping breaths, savoring the beautiful taste of the real air. He vowed to taste all the pure air, every breath he took for the rest of his life. But he promptly forgot the pledge, as his eyes blinked hard trying to adjust to the bright neon light. At first he saw just shadows, shapes all around him.

Then he saw the black face staring hard at him with deep concern just a few inches from his face. It
was
Detroit.

“Rock! Rock! are you okay? Come on, man, try to move, breathe deep, get that zombie-shit out of your lungs.” Detroit suddenly stood back and flung his hand out, slapping the Doomsday Warrior right across the cheek. Rockson felt a surge of anger well up in him and his cheeks got flushed. He opened his eyes wide now and looked like he wanted to choke Detroit.

“Sorry about that, partner,” Detroit laughed as he helped Rock to his feet. “Had to do something to get your systems going again.”

Rockson shook his head from side to side trying to clear the cobwebs.

“Shovel . . .” he mumbled, “Give me shit-shovel,” Rockson croaked out.

“Oh God, no!” Chen exclaimed.

Rockson grinned. “Aw, I’m just kidding!”

“You
are
a shit!” the ebony-faced Freefighter said with a sly grin as he freed Rock from his chains with the jailer’s key. Archer was a few feet away ripping Chen’s bonds free as he threw the gas helmet in disgust across the floor. “Me and Archer decided to go against orders and come looking for you after you’d been gone more than twenty-four hours. I think you’re glad we did.”

Archer growled and looked at Rockson with a quizzical expression. “YOU—NOOOOO—MMMMAD?”

“You can bet your family jewels on that,” Rock said as he stood up and almost fell down. “I wonder why I’m not zombied out like the rest of their gas heads,” he asked with an almost detached curiosity.

“Not enough time, Rock,” Detroit replied. “We were watching some others of them getting the juice, before you showed up. At least two or three minutes is the usual amount. Unfortunately we couldn’t stop them from being gassed, as our primary goal was to find and free you and Chen.”

Rock’s brain was clearing enough for him to realize that Detroit was holding a Liberator shotgun right on three of the guards standing across the corridor. Archer as well had his huge crossbow held in one arm, aimed at someone’s gizzard across the room ready to dissect it if they made the slightest move. They didn’t move. He continued to undo Chen’s chain bonds and helped him to his feet.