Doomsday Warrior 16 - American Overthrow (2 page)

“Not
you,
scum,” the rear guard said as No. 1,278 emerged nearly last. “You come with me today.”

“What—what’s wrong?” No. 1,278 asked nervously. Not that he wanted to go to the factory, he hated it, but he had never been taken off from the work crew, singled out. He didn’t like it.

“Shut up, pig,” the guard, a large, beefy fellow snarled, slamming the butt of the submachine gun into his ribs. “There are no questions allowed, you know that.”

“Sorry, sorry,” No. 1,278 managed to mumble as he pulled back just enough to avoid the full force of the blow. The guard marched him against the factory traffic toward the east side of the city. That was toward where the generals who ruled, and where the scientists who made the gas and other terrible weapons were located. As terrible as his life was, No. 1,278 felt fear, and didn’t want to go. Something was
wrong,
he could feel it in the core of his stomach and was afraid that he would vomit up the centipede meal that had been breakfast.

“Here, in here,” the guard said gruffly as they came to a steel-sided building. Inside, more guards were at every turn, all of them with olive green, high-lapeled uniforms with the round circle with a lightning bolt through it. That was the symbol of General Hanover’s elite troops. He was marched up and down one hall after another, until at last they came to a white tiled room with showers. Here, two more guards grabbed him roughly and tore his clothes off, throwing him into one of the shower stalls, and letting the hot water cascade down over him. It was too hot, but at least it got rid of the freezing cold that had numbed him for days. He welcomed it, feeling his joints loosen up a little.

When they determined that he was clean enough for whatever purposes they had in mind, they pulled him back out again. He was marched stark naked through the tiled room and into another one. They thrust him inside with such force that he flew forward and fell right onto the floor. His face hit hard, as he didn’t have the balance or reflexes that he had once had. And several teeth shattered out of his mouth, sliding across the floor like lopsided marbles. When he looked up, once his brain cleared from the sudden jarring pain, No. 1,278 saw that he was in a circular-shaped room with smooth metallic walls—perhaps thirty feet in diameter and twenty feet high. And when he glanced up he saw men looking down at him through a thick glass partition.

“Ah, you are here,” a voice boomed over a hidden speaker. “Welcome, welcome.” No. 1,278 rose slowly to his knees and then upright, forgetting in his increasing terror that he was naked. The men looked down at him with amused expressions on their faces. He knew that one of them was General Hanover himself. He remembered him, had seen the blond bushy-eyebrowed young man riding down the street on a jeep after the coup d’etat. There were a good dozen officers on the other side of the partition along with some white-smocked scientists. All were apparently amused by the naked bug below them. They laughed, pointing down at him.

“You are most fortunate, No. 1,278,” the general spoke again and his voice thundered through the room, hurting No. 1,278’s ears. “You are going to be given the honor of testing our newest gas, Cytogen. It’s really quite an amazing arrangement of atoms into a molecule that— Oh, but I’m boring you, I’m sure,” the general reflected. “At any rate, you will be remembered for your sacrifice, your name inscribed in the annals of our honored dead.”

“Your honored de—” No. 1,278 muttered back, not quite getting the full impact of the words.

“Begin,” Hanover said, turning and nodding to a bearded white-smocked man. The scientist reached forward and pressed a button. Suddenly No. 1,278 heard a hissing sound. He knew right away what it was—gas. He looked around desperately like a trapped animal, as he smelled an acrid odor. It was invisible, but he knew it was coming out of a duct on the curved wall.

Suddenly No. 1,278 felt a pain shoot through his lungs and his eyes that made any pain he had ever felt in his life seem like a feather. He gasped deeply, which only seared his lungs further, and let out a terrible scream. His skin seemed to be on fire, every part of him. He glanced down to see his flesh peeling up, bubbling red, and spitting out drops. He felt a pressure inside him, as if he were being filled with air, a balloon being overblown. The instant before he exploded out in all directions, his eyes and face and rib-cage erupting in a gush of blood and steaming flesh, No. 1,278 knew he was a dead man. And then he was, splattered all over the inside of the “testing” chamber.

“Too slow,” General Hanover said, looking up from his watch at the head scientist, Parsons. “That took almost twelve seconds. I want it in three. There can’t be
any
time for our enemies to fire back at us, to defend themselves in any way. Speed it up, and if you can—get rid of all that blood and junk that’s all over the room. It will dirty up everything and vastly complicate our clean-up activities when we begin taking over the other Free Cities.”

With that, General Hanover turned and exited from the viewing chamber, his top officers walking quickly behind him, talking excitedly about the ferocity of the gas.

Two

“R
ock, look out!” Detroit Green screamed. A reptilian horned and scaled creature that looked like it had stepped out of the Marquis De Sade’s nightmares launched itself from the darkness of the cave Ted Rockson had just begun to enter. The Doomsday Warrior, whose attention had been on some scuttling sounds above him, barely had time to hear the warning and see the monstrous shape as big as a grizzly but a thousand times uglier come flying at him like a living missile.

“Shit,” he spat as he dropped instinctively to the hard ground, his mutant-reflexes taking over faster than his mind could even process the information. He could smell the thing, dank and sour, almost skunk-like, and could feel the claws whistling over his head as he dug his face into the bat-dropping-strewn ground. One of the claws, long and curved, slashed right along his back as the creature flew overhead. Rockson felt a stream of fire course up his backbone. He hugged the ground, not daring to move as the thing soared by, its long green tail flopping down on his head as it cleared Rockson and came down some three yards ahead. It turned and searched for the prey it had so closely missed and let out a roar that made birds fly from their perches a mile off.

But Rockson was already in motion. He wasn’t about to wait for the thing to get a second look at the menu and make it’s choice: one Ted Rockson, appetizer.

“To the right,” Detroit screamed, not able to get a bead on the immense carnivore as Rockson was between him and the beast. Even as Detroit yelled, Rock was rolling over and over like a log as he reached down for his shotpistol. And the reptile thing, whatever the hell it was, was coming fast, its long claws slamming down into the dirt just behind him, trying to catch hold of something soft. Rockson heard the burp of a Liberator submachine gun on full autofire as Detroit suddenly saw an opening on the creature’s flank. Rock saw the stream of slugs rip right into the thing’s side, slugs that would have taken out a grizzly from such close range. But
it
didn’t seem to particularly notice the slugs, beyond scrunching up its demon face as if an annoying gnat had lodged in its ear.

But it did buy Rockson just the split second he needed to come to his feet and get out of the thing’s way. He rushed to the right as the nightmare charged forward again, once more missing its prey. It let out another roar of frustration. It clearly wasn’t used to having to actually pursue anything. It rarely took more than a second or two for the monstrosity to get lunch, Rock figured. He turned on the run and let loose with one shot after another from his .12 gauge shotpistol. The big handgun jerked back in his fingers as if he was holding a mule’s back-leg. One, two, three shots thundered out in the cold afternoon air, under the pinkish sun staring down through high green clouds.

Rock could see the shots tear into the creature’s chest, another in the middle of the neck. Thick greenish blood began oozing out. But not a hell of a lot. And it sure as hell didn’t stop the nightmare from coming.

“I think we got problems,” Detroit screamed as Rockson came flying toward him. Both of them made a hasty retreat toward their hybrid horses, a dozen of which were tethered some fifty yards away. The two men had been out on a meat gathering expedition as Century City’s supplies were running dangerously low for its population of nearly forty thousand. Eight teams had gone out in different directions to procure the vital protein for the inhabitants of the underground rebel city. Rockson, being the top military field commander of C.C., didn’t have to go. But he had wanted to, seeing it as a chance to unwind, a sort of combination mini-vacation and hunting party. Now he wished he was even back in the Council Chamber arguing with the politicians of the city, instead of out here in the wilds facing something that shouldn’t, couldn’t exist. Only no one had apparently told it.

The reptile-thing came barreling after them, not even moving at full speed as it was clearly starting to enjoy the chase, a little spice in a routine and boring life. It let out another sound that Rockson swore had overtones of enjoyment, something like “Tally ho,” or “bloody good show,” though he knew it was possible that his fear of being eaten might have colored his perceptions.

“Let me try a couple of pineapples,” Detroit shouted, as the two Freefighters ran side by side.

“Do your thing baby,” Rockson shouted back, as he let off a few more blasts from the bucking shotpistol, trying to slow the thing down. Detroit, a barrel-chested black man, one of Rock’s inner team of elite commando fighters, had twin belts of grenades strapped across his chest, weapons that he always wore, some said even in bed. He ripped two of them off, pulled the pins and heaved them at the nightmare some fifty feet behind and gaining fast.

It moved with a strange gait as if its legs weren’t quite symmetrical. But it moved fast and as the grenades came spinning in, Rock saw that its reflexes were as quick as any creature he had ever encountered. It leaped to the side, dodging one grenade and batting the second one away as it came barreling in. There were two snapping explosions back a few yards and puffs of smoke on each side of the thing. But they didn’t cause any damage other than to worms just below the surface of the cratered soil.

“I don’t think that helped,” Rockson huffed as the two men looked at each other, starting to get a little nervous. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Men were superior to the animals, they had weapons and brains. But apparently this thing wasn’t cognizant of all that. It just kept coming after them in that crazy lopsided gait, its oversized jaws full of saber teeth dripping with anticipatory saliva at the imminent kill.

“Maybe we’ll have to sacrifice a few ’brids,” Detroit said, ripping off another grenade from his supply. “If it comes down to it—I’d rather it’s them than us.”

“Maybe,” Rock shouted back the yard or two that separated the fast-breathing men as they ran at full speed. “But there’s a ’brid shortage back in C.C., since the rhinovirus took out nearly half of them. I don’t want to lose the whole fucking batch if we can help it.” But the creature was gaining fast and even Rock could see that Detroit was right. When it came down to choosing between smelly steeds and his own ass—the choice wasn’t all that hard.

Suddenly the nightmare stopped and stood up on its hind legs. It looked formidable and even larger than either of the Freefighters had realized.

“Fucking thing must stand nine feet tall,” Rockson whistled as the two men slowed just a little, their heads turned around to see what they could of their pursuer. It sniffed at the air, the huge red nostrils opening and closing like bellows as the jaws parted wider, the saucer-sized eyes shut for a few seconds.

“He’s got the scent of the ’brids,” Detroit said, ripping off a second grenade so both hands were full again.

“Damn, he’s a big mother,” Rockson hissed in both fear and respect. “But that yellow stomach doesn’t look as well armored as the rest of him. Maybe we can do some damage down there.”

Detroit pulled back both of his thick linebacker arms and let loose one after another with the pineapples. They flew hard through the air like a pitcher throwing the last strikes of a pennant clincher, and landed within inches of where he had aimed. There were two sharp explosions and pieces of glowing white hot metal ripped into the underside of the thing.

This time it let out with a real bellow of pain as it flailed around with its thick-clawed arms, its head whipping from side to side. But though they had hurt it, they sure as hell hadn’t stopped it. Its wide red eyes zeroed in on the two humans and the look that it sent to them told them both that if the creature had to follow them to the ends of the earth, their asses were bloody grass. It wasn’t used to getting stung. It didn’t like it.

“I think we made it mad,” Detroit shouted as they both started running hard again away from the ’brids, the nightmare now galloping after them with its odd gait.

“You
made it angry, you did,” Rock managed to grin for a second as he tore alongside the black Freefighter.

“What now, Kemo Sabé?” Detroit asked, ripping two more of the grenades off, if only to feel a slight sense of false security from holding them. The ’brids were about a hundred yards to the left; Rockson could see them through some trees. Maybe he would have to sacrifice them and the big load of meat they had already stacked up atop the pack-creatures. This had been their last day of hunting. He needn’t have approached that cave— He should have been satisfied with what they already had. But hindsight is genius. It’s the present that makes a man feel pretty stupid.

And suddenly Rockson felt a hell of a lot stupider, as he didn’t notice that the ground just ahead was soggy with telltale purple grasses, designating swampy soil. And by the time he looked down he wasn’t moving any more, his boots already sinking in a good six inches with lewd sucking sounds. He tried to pull free as Detroit, several yards to the side and ahead, kept running, skirting the swamp and not even realizing that his commander was knee-deep in the big muddy.