Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion (3 page)

“It is the Nazis, Comrade Colonel, who are the source—”

“The source of the high-level technology our observation aircraft have uncovered in South America. You, Antonovitch, you will take a small force and the necessary equipment.”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel?”

Karamatsov stopped now, before the entrance to the prefabricated shelter. Men and equipment moved everywhere about him—more and more of the supplies he required were being flown in from The Underground City in the Ural Mountains. “You will take your small force and gather what intelligence you can without being detected

concerning the Nazi headquarters base—its makeup, its defensive capabilities. You will ascertain as best as possible the size and composition of their reserve forces. As soon as Krakovski’s forces arrive, if not sooner, I shall personally lead the bulk of our force against the Nazi stronghold. Once we have destroyed their headquarters and source of supply, it shall be easy enough to destroy their expeditionary force.” “But …”

Karamatsov stopped—he had begun to walk inside the hut. He waited.

“But, Comrade Colonel—what of—”

“Rourke?” Karamatsov whispered. “What of Rourke and his family and my wife?” And Karamatsov allowed himself to laugh. “I have in the most likely event caused the death of his son. The Jew, Rubenstein—he is most assuredly dead. The Nazis which attacked us are at Rourke’s doorstep. I have hurt Rourke—now let him suffer for a time. In a way, things have worked for the best. Rather than a quick and merciful death, he and my wife can now contemplate the inevitability of their fate. It would be impossible for the Eden Project to stand against us. But let him plan—and when we have dealt with this matter of the Nazi homeground, then destroyed what remains of the Nazi force, we shall very slowly close our grip on the Eden Project—very slowly. We shall destroy him, destroy her—destroy them all. And then Krakovski shall return to what used to be Germany and France and Italy—he shall destroy the wild tribes or subjugate them for use as our slaves.” Karamatsov smiled. He clapped Antonovitch on the right shoulder with his right hand. “And I shall be master of this earth—or there will be no more earth.” He left Maj. Nicolai Antonovitch—knowing the look in the man’s eyes without having to see it.

Ivan Krakovski watched the shadow of his machine skim across the broken ground—it was like a shadow of death, he thought. He tried to find poetry in all things because poetry had always been his first love. He knew, for example, that had he been born in a different era, he would have been one of the great Russian poets. He still indulged in verse and planned that someday after he had aided the Hero Colonel, Vladmir Karamatsov, in his conquest of the reborn earth, he would write the definitive history of the period and sing the sOngs of triumph in verse. And that someday in the distant future men and women would praise not only his heroic efforts on behalf of the establishment of communism as the world order, but praise also the heroic words with which he immortalized the efforts of his leader.

The shadow of death. It seemed almost to lovingly idle with the things which ran before it. The things were not men, were not women. He composed this in his mind, how he would tell it. The Wild Tribes of Europe had long ago ceased to lay claim to humanity. The French attempt at surviving the global holocaust had failed—and dismally so. They had been ill-prepared, unprepared to endure centuries beneath the ground. They had emerged too soon. Radiation had taken its toll. There were still, indeed, massive hot spots on the planet, where the background radiation was of such high level that the land would not be

habitable for perhaps a hundred thousand years, perhaps twice that time. But the hapless French had ventured forth before the atmosphere had restored itself to a point where plants would grow again in any abundance. Starvation, likely cannibalism, the genetic mutations of radiation—yet thousands of them had survived. Nearly naked, their skin leathery tough, no language that could be discerned, they roamed the plains of Europe scavenging for what vegetable material could be found, huddled in caves from the cold by night, their meager, poorly designed fires barely able to warm them. The death rate among them was staggering, he knew. But yet they survived.

The shadow. It brushed at one of them and the thing—a woman only because she had dirty pendulous breasts and an infant clung to the left one—gazed skyward.

The shadow of death. Krakovski prided himself on being with his men, doing what they did, enduring their hardships, eating the same food as they. And now as he spoke into the teardrop-shaped microphone before his lips—“Fire at will”—he did the same.

He lightly touched the triggering mechanism on the throttle, activating the machine guns. And the woman and the child, neither of whom were human any more, collapsed beneath the shadow of his machine, a ragged stitch of brilliant red blood bursting across the two bodies that at her breast were one.

The shadow of death.

Krakovski wrote in his diary—of his emotions, of his appreciation of what had transpired. “As many as one hundred of the members of what is perhaps the largest of the wild tribes were liquidated this day by my own hand and the hands of my corps of loyal pilots. These one hundred were herded away from the bulk of the group which we encountered on a routine search-and-destroy

mission in southern France. The remainder of the group— some forty-eight men and adult women—were less deformed and or physically ill than their fellows and were taken under our care to be employed usefully in whatever capacity will most advance the cause of global communism.” The forty-eight men and women were currently penned inside the portable titanium alloy fences which reminded him of the corral structures he had seen in videotapes of the American western movies from five centuries earlier. The fence was, of course, electrified. He considered this as he closed his diary and stood, walking to the flap of his tent and opening it, looking out through the rain and watching them, the forty-eight. Sparks flew as raindrops would touch the fence rails, the forty-eight huddled together like an impossibly large litter of puppies or kittens against some invisible mother.

He thought of the Hero Colonel, Vladmir Karamatsov. Krakovski was personally disgusted that Karatmatsov used women from among the Wild Tribes for sexual purposes. Because they were not really women, only roughly in the shape of women. Morally, it was like having sex with an animal. But perhaps it repulsed Krakovski as well, because the Hero Colonel would beat the Wild Tribe women to death afterward—or during. Ivan Krakovski was not quite certain which, nor did he care to find out.

“Comrade Major!”

He looked again through the tent flap. Running across the mud flats from the communications tent he could see Brasniewicz, a yellow message blotter in his upraised, waving right hand.

“Comrade Major!”

Krakovski stood his ground beneath the protection of his tent—Brasniewcz was wet already and wasn’t even an officer. Krakovski waved the man forward and then turned away from the rain and the forty-eight huddled bodies exposed to it within the confines of the electrified fence. He

walked across the floor of his tent and sat down at his portable writing desk.

After a moment, he heard Brasniewicz at the tent flap. “Comrade Major?”

“Come in, comrade,” Krakovski called out.

Brasniewicz appeared, his hatless head dripping water, his uniform soaked.

“You look most unmilitary, man—you should be reduced in rank for your appearance were there any rank lower than that which you already possess.”

“Yes, Comrade Major. I apologize, Comrade Major.”

“You have a message on that pad. What is it—read it.”

“Yes, Comrade Major,” and Brasniewicz straightened himself to full attention, water dribbling down his face from the wet, plastered black hair. “It is from Comrade Colonel Karamatsov.”

“Read it, comrade.”

” ‘Ivan—’ I am sorry, Comrade Major, but—”

“Just read the message, Brasniewicz.”

“Yes, Comrade Major. ‘New developments here. Withdraw all forces immediately—repeat, immediately—from operation in which you are currently engaged. Join me at best speed at North American Command. Advise ETA immediately.’ It is signed by the comrade colonel, Comrade Major Krakovski.”

“Take this message.” Krakovski nodded, leaning back in his folding chair, his polished boots coming up to rest on the corner of the writing desk. “To Colonel Vladimir Karamatsov—Message received and understood. ETA North American Command—” and Krakovski looked up from admiring the shine on his own boots. “Encrypt the message and wait its transmission until I have met with my officers.”

“Yes, Comrade Major.”

“You are dismissed, Brasniewicz.” Krakovski swung his boots down and stood, stretching, as Brasniewicz did a

smart enough about-face and marched out of the tent.

Krakovski yawned, walking across the tent to where his cap and his trenchcoat hung—he took down the cap and placed it carefully on his head, then the trenchcoat, belting it firmly about his waist. He started toward the tent flap, through the opening and into the rain-soaked mud, the shine on his boots glowing dully as he watched them, the water beading on them. He kept walking, toward the fence and the forty-eight.

He approached the nearest of the two ponchoed guards on the perimeter of the fence.

The man snapped to attention, making a rifle salute. Krakovski nodded, raising his right hand to the peak of his cap, returning the salute with his customary sharpness, yet casualness. “Give me your rifle, comrade.”

“Yes, Comrade Major.”

Krakovski took the weapon in his hands and hefted it— it felt right. He walked away from the guard and toward the electrified corral-type fence. “Corporal, shut off the voltage and signal to me when this is accomplished. Then have a second magazine available for my immediate use.”

“Yes, Comrade Major.”

Krakovski approached the fence. He could see some of them looking at him, their eyes filled with fear. He looked down to his boots—the water was not beading as well as it had and already his toes were beginning to feel damp.

“The electricity is off, Comrade Major!”

“Very good, Corporal—do not forget the spare maga-zme!

The dampness of his toes persisted—but he had always prided himself on enduring the same hardships his men endured. He raised the assault rifle to his hip, settling his feet firmly on the muddy ground—his boots definitely were seeping water. He worked the bolt of the assault rifle, then without looking thumbed the selector to full auto.

He opened fire, neat three-round bursts. He prided

himself that he was better than the best of his men with the issue weapon. The way in which the Wild Tribes creatures were concentrated, it was possible to penetrate many bodies with a single burst. They made the customary whining sounds, like dogs howling in pain when they were beaten. The forty-round disposable magazine empty, he buttoned it out, extending his left hand. The magazine was not instantly forthcoming and he looked behind him—the guard corporal was vomiting. “Control yourself, comrade—such weakness cannot be tolerated.”

The man vomited again and pulled himself erect. “Forgive me, Comrade,” and the man vomited again, Krakovski looking down, the vomit comingling with the rain water that was puddled in the mud, running toward his boots. The man extended the magazine to him.

“Put yourself on report—you are an animal,” Krakovski snarled, taking the magazine. He rammed it up the well, then continued to fire. One of the more human-looking of the women was crawling through the mud away from the mound of bodies. Her left leg was covered with blood. He assumed it was a wound because the blood did not dissolve away in the rain. Her naked breasts dragged through the mud, cutting furrows there.

He did not like to waste ammunition, but he was merciful. So he shot her in the face.

The light was gray still, Rourke seated on the tailgate of his camouflaged Ford pick-up, listening as Dodd, Lerner and Styles almost seemed to interrogate Wolfgang Mann. “I find it very hard to believe, Colonel, that someone who wears a uniform bearing Nazi insignia can seriously ask us to help him in restoring democracy.”

“WejfCannot restore democracy—there has never been democracy among us. It would be the dawn of a new era, Captain Dodd.”

“With all due respect, Colonel,” Jeff Styles, the Eden One science officer interrupted, “you come here and ask us to perhaps limit our own chances of survival just to help you.”

“We have enemies enough,” Craig Lerner volunteered. “If some of our people—or even just Doctor Rourke here— if some of us go off attacking people in South America, all we’ll do is provoke retaliation.”

Rourke watched Mann’s eyes. The standartenfuehrer, who preferred being called Colonel, who spoke of freeing his people, leaned heavily against the side of the earth mover which had been used to help clear the sand from the road surface at the far end of which Eden One was now parked. “I—I do not know what to say, gentlemen—except that if on Unity Day Deiter Bern is murdered and the leader goes unchallenged, no portion of this earth will be

safe from the might of our armies. You have a mortal enemy already—the Russians. I view the Communists as a common enemy. It makes for the most clear of logical deductions that those who believe in freedom should unite against those who do not, to ensure that freedom will endure. If we fight among ourselves …” Mann’s voice trailed off. No one spoke.

But then John Rourke did. “I talked with the colonel, brought him here. I’ve been up all night listening to everyone argue. The colonel would have nothing to gain by lying. He doubtlessly has a superior force that could be used to attack our encampment. But he hasn’t done that. His force attacked the Communist gunships when I went after my family and my friends. They made no move to interfere with our escape. When Karamatsov and his people—”

“You seem obsessed with this Karamatsov character,” Dodd snapped.

“He’s just that kind of a wild and crazy guy.” Rourke smiled. And then he let the smile fade. “But when he attacked us, Mann and his people didn’t come in for the kill. We were at our most vulnerable.”