Doomsday Warrior 09 - America’s Zero Hour (15 page)

Rockson lay silent. He tried to meditate, to bring himself to the innermost recesses of his mind. But he couldn’t. He was distracted by the eerie-sounding Arctic wind and by the deep regular breathing and snoring of the exhausted hungry men all around him.

He opened his eyes; noticed a light playing on the tent, shining through its coarse fibers. The northern lights, that’s all. For a second it had startled him.

He struggled to return to an unremembered dream. He tried to channel his thoughts in the direction of Rona and Kim. Pleasant thoughts. But his mind kept coming back to the deteriorating condition of his men. All had sore, strained, tired muscles and backs stiff from having to stay in one position so long on the sleds. Farrell’s and Detroit’s hands and feet were covered with chilblains and some frostbite. All had faces burned by the constant icy wind. Their noses were peeling and their faces were cracked with the cold. Pedersen had had a trembling fit and suffered from shortness of breath. Tinglim’s salves, ointments, and medicines had been invaluable under the grueling circumstances, and had provided relief. But they were all close to cracking, like Robinson had.

Even though Robinson had recovered, it was a sign of things to come, if they got no respite. Tempers flared; one’s mind played tricks. All Arctic adventurers had reported this phenomenon. Was it the very cold, the raw numbing cold that wouldn’t go away, or was it the icy sterile environment of snow, wind and ice?

Rock checked his chronometer.
Seven hours
had passed since the hunting party had left camp. Rock was worried. What had become of them?

He decided that a walk outside might clear his brain of the muzziness he’d felt. He found Tinglim outside staring at the sky.

“I don’t like the look of that,” Tinglim said, pointing to the northern lights that danced above them transforming the white world of reality into rainbows of blue-green fantasy.

“I don’t like the feel of it,” said Rockson.

Tinglim agreed, “It’s the sort of northern lights that awaken the Sasquatch. Why, even the dogs are affected.”

Rockson turned to the huddled dogs, saw their wide-eyed look and laid-back ears. They were uneasy, all right. “The hunting party was due back an hour ago,” Rockson said. “I think we should go after them—now.”

Shortly thereafter, a party composed of Tinglim, Archer, Rockson, Pedersen, and Chen headed out over the snow. Detroit and Scheransky were left to watch camp. The aurora borealis raged across the sky like some demented electrical demon seizing the imagination of even the dullest of creatures below and projecting fear from the starry vault of heaven. Electric blues, greens, and purples assumed grotesque shapes—monsters crouching, writhing, creeping, ready to ambush one’s very soul. A feeling of dread anxiety filled the men who rode into the night. This hypnotic light was the source of irrationality. Something that challenged their rational minds, threatening insanity. It was with profound relief that they came under cover of the deep forest.

It was not long before Tinglim discovered the hunting party’s tracks and the traps. In less than an hour, the heavy drag marks in the snow were discovered also. They followed these for about a half-mile. Soon, in the distance could be seen a glow that seemed to be emanating from the mouth of a cave. Rock and his men dismounted their sleds to investigate on foot. They climbed the small hill of loose scree and, hidden by a copse of trees, watched shadows cross the light in the cave opening. Rockson motioned his men to go inside.

With their flashlights lit, they advanced through the mouth of the cave. “You’ll have to be very careful,” Rockson admonished. “Avoid the stalactites and stalagmites. Some of them look damn sharp.”

It was like an obstacle course. The cave narrowed down and forced them to go single file. Chen spotted a bit of rag from McCaughlin’s jacket on one of the sharp green stalactites. The cave narrowed more and the ceiling lowered; they found themselves crouching.

Deep inside the winding cave, Rock was the first to notice something peculiar. A smell. Foul, musky. The dogs had sort of a musky scent which he had grown used to, but this was a
putrid
odor that now assaulted his olfactory sense. Something he had never smelled before. Something like rancid human perspiration, or a thousand sweat socks moldering in gym lockers that had just been opened after a hundred years of sitting idle.

“That is Sasquatch smell,” gasped out Tinglim.

Rock led the way as they climbed down into another narrow passageway. From time to time they doused their lights to follow the flickering glow. This new tunnel was not limestone like the other passageways, but seemed carved out of dark rock. Trickles of muddy runoff water ran through the pebbly brown dirt underfoot. They were deep under the mountain now, perhaps a quarter mile in, and still descending. The steep pebbly ground slowed their progress and didn’t do their attempt at being quiet any good. They were almost at their goal: The glow ahead was bright enough to light their way, so they flicked off their flashlights.

A scream that caused neck hairs to quiver and stand erect, issued from somewhere ahead. It was a scream that sent adrenaline through Rock’s body making his heart pound in his ears—it was a scream that could waken the dead, the sound of an animal in exquisite agony. Slowly, cautiously, Rockson and his team progressed toward that orange light ahead and the source of the scream. The floor of the cave grew smoother, as if worn by the tread of many feet. The ceiling heightened to nine feet or more, and the horrid smell grew overwhelmingly strong.

Rockson stopped without warning; Chen thudded into him, almost pushing Rockson off a ledge. They were twenty feet above the floor of a high dome-ceilinged circular chamber. As they knelt down to keep out of sight, their eyes beheld a gruesome scene. “Easy, men,” Rockson whispered.

Robinson, or rather what was left of him, was being roasted on a spit by immense red-haired creatures that resembled orangutans. Five pointy-headed Sasquatch were waiting to taste the flesh of their roasted victim.

“It must have been Robinson’s scream,” whispered Chen. Rockson nodded. Against the far wall of the chamber lay McCaughlin, bound and gagged, a look of horror on his face as he waited
his
turn on the barbecue spit.

McCaughlin’s parka was torn and bloodied, and his neck had a welt—from some sort of rope burn, Rock surmised. Their big friend had to be rescued—now. But to do that, the rescuers would have to do battle. There was no way to get to McCaughlin except through the whole mess of eaters. And the red-furred, pointy-headed things wouldn’t like that at all.

Rock sized up his opponents. He could see them clearly in the light of the cooking fire. They were sitting on their haunches, yet even in this position they were as tall as a man. “They must be nine feet tall if an inch,” Rock whispered to Chen, who was on the ground alongside him, taking in the gruesome spectacle.

“Yeah, and each one of those buggers weighs in at four hundred pounds, I’ll bet,” Chen answered uncomfortably. “But a star-knife or two might cut them down to size. If I can just hit the right place.”

Rock replied, “You do that, Chen. But don’t try it from here. They’re so busy eating, we might be able to get closer. Close enough to use our shotpistols
and
your star-knives. The closer we get before they spot us, the more likely it is they won’t get a chance to slaughter McCaughlin.”

With Rockson in the lead, the men moved along the ledge, until they found sufficient roughness to the twenty feet of rockface below to afford them footholds. They descended, quite out in the open. Should any of the Sasquatch have turned from their grim repast, they would have seen them. But the monsters were too busy eating. Rock and his men spread out fast, rushed at the things. When they turned, dropping their burned-human supper, the Freefighters began blasting them. Two fell.

“Rapid fire,” yelled Rockson, his voice echoing through the subterranean chamber. “Aim for their chests. Don’t let ’em grab ya.”

The creatures leapt to the fight, having picked up their crude but massive weapons—pikes and axes of the most primitive sort. Chen yelled out, “Rock, here come two more of ’em!”

“Damn,” the Doomsday Warrior muttered. The present bunch of opponents was enough trouble! There in the light of the cooking fire, in the smell of human flesh burning, the creatures of the Arctic night and the human invaders faced off.

Rock was confronted by the biggest of the bunch, who wielded an ax that could have taken a chunk out of a truck. The chipped stone head of the thing, secured to a wooden handle, was the size of a man’s arm. It swished by Rock as he dove to the left and fired up and sideways, catching the man-thing in the rib cage with a burst of hellfire.

The exploding pellets dug into the Sasquatch and did their work, disintegrating the thing’s torso into spinning bloody chunks that splattered across the chamber. The thing heaved to the ground, half afire. Rock headed toward McCaughlin, to free him.

Chen hit his target not with a blast of his shotpistol, but with something even more deadly—an exploding star-knife. The martial-arts expert’s whizzing death-dealer caught a Sasquatch in midroar, right in its throat. The roar turned to a gurgle as the five-pointed metal star dug into its vocal cords. Then, when the explosive tips of the star-knife exploded, the huge red-furred head blew off the body of the monster and slammed against the ceiling of the chamber. The headless body of the cave being staggered forward, its huge hairy arms flailing, blood fountaining from its neck. Then it fell with a
whump.
“Good shot, Chen,” the Doomsday Warrior yelled. But the Freefighters still faced five of the man-eaters. And they were augmented by two more nasty fellows who appeared on the ledge above. Each of the new buddy-boys carried boulders poised over their heads, held by their huge hairy arms. They had every intention of crushing the invaders, and then eating them too.

Wham!
A boulder was tossed, slamming down into the hard dirt just to the left of Rockson. Another boulder momentarily flew above and then crashed right next to Archer. The throwers melted into the shadows.

Where were they? Rock wondered as he tried to sight up the elusive creatures in the half-light. “Random fire, full automatic,” he yelled, but the Freefighters were already sending out a hail by the time he finished speaking. Rock decided to play hero and shot out from his concealment. He zigzagged thirty yards up the underground chamber, narrowly missing getting caught by a monstrous boulder thrown from above. He dove behind a trapezoid-shaped stalagmite. Rockson rolled out, his shotpistol in hand, and came to a standing position.

He had found the source of the boulders. There! Twenty feet above him was a grinning Sasquatch. It was beating on its broad chest. It snarled and let out a stream of steam from its nostrils into the cold cavern air. And then it grabbed up a desk-sized boulder and began to throw it. Tinglim threw his harpoon at the creature. It stuck in the broad chest and the thing’s eyes rolled up, its pitch of death altered enough to just miss the Doomsday Warrior.

The concussion of the shattering boulder shook the cavern as Rock was showered with sharp rock fragments. Then another opponent jumped down. Rockson stood his ground and stared into the red, veiny eyes, as big as coffee mugs.

The creature stared back. It was the biggest, ten feet tall. This Sasquatch had a thick pelt of orange hair, not red. Its wide skull and flat face ended up in a point, sort of like a dunce cap at the crown of his head. But there was no mistaking it: despite the primitive hunger and hostility in those red eyes, there was another element—intelligence. The thing was doubly dangerous therefore.

“Greeeffffffffhhhh!” the Sasquatch growled, its wet nostrils flaring, its eyes growing wild and impatient. There was a thin trickle of saliva running down that massive red, hairy jaw. Teeth appeared but the sides of the mouth weren’t parted. It was more like hunger than friendship. The thing edged forward and Rock began quick dancing steps backward.

Suddenly the thing leapt, and Rock did a flip backward, landing on his feet. It would have made Chen proud.

That seemed to be about enough for the hulking half-human, and it rushed forward trying to engulf the Freefighter in a bear hug to the death. But Rock was too fast, stepping sideways in a Pa-kua movement.

The Sasquatch was left clutching air. And he got even madder when Rockson delivered a kick to its knee—or what he hoped was its knee. It howled
“Frekkkkkk!”
Rock thought it might mean “Now I kill and eat you, but first I pluck your arms and legs.”

It stood and stared at Rockson, becoming absolutely motionless, frozen like a holgraphic snapshot, its every sense of perception focused on the Freefighter. Its red, wide-slitted eyes were a furnace, filled with incendiary flames of anger. The Doomsday Warrior could practically feel the heat emanating from them. A black tongue, thick as a man’s wrist, darted in and out of the open jaw, as if it was tasting Rockson’s scent. And evidently it liked what it tasted. It rested back down on its haunches preparing what Rockson could see was a new leap.

Without turning, Rock sensed the presence of another—a human—to his right side.

“Move real slow, Chen,” Rock whispered. “This thing’s looking dinner right in the eye. I don’t think it’s going to watch you too hard. Circle to the left.”

“I’ll take a shot at it. I think my star-knife can do the trick,” the Freefighter said. Chen moved almost imperceptibly to the side, out of the direct striking range of the thing.

“Not yet,” Rock said as he moved ever so slowly to the opposite side. He moved with trained fighting instincts, honed down over the years. Rockson was a pure fighting machine, a survivor. The Doomsday Warrior had withstood all that the cruel Post-Nuke world could hurl at him. But he knew in his heart that someday something would come at him that would be too powerful—and he would die. This might be that day.

But Rock didn’t feel like taking an endless snooze in the Arctic today. This monster was going to have to die, not him. He kept his eyes directly on the creature’s own burning saucers, looking for the sudden flicker that meant attack. But the Sasquatch was in no hurry. Its hunting instincts had taken over, and it stood frozen, its big mitt-sized hands raised up, its apelike snout pointing like a hunting dog straight at the Doomsday Warrior. The red eyes followed Rockson as he moved, letting Chen lift the star-knife and prepare to hurl it . . . The Sasquatch grew impatient, sprang into the air uncoiling those enormous legs, and headed straight toward Rockson’s throat. The hairy hands tried to close around the Doomsday Warrior’s neck in one swift grab. Chen couldn’t throw for fear of hitting Rock.