Doomsday Warrior 10 - American Nightmare (12 page)

He found it! A spanking-red Porsche. He smashed the driver’s-side window with a rock. The alarm went off, but the wiring was simple and he cut it off quickly. The ignition system was likewise routine electrical circuitry. Rock managed to hot-wire it in a minute.

He roared off, feeling his way through the smooth gears, headed south toward the city dump. He took Highway 15, blowing his horn, taking the left lane, swinging madly around the other cars. He hit 110 mph. He remembered the ramp down to the dump had a small sign,
GARBAGE RAMP
. The sanitation trucks used it early in the morning.

In a matter of minutes Rock reached the ramp and swung off the road. Rockson got up some more speed on the ramp; he roared the Porsche along between the heaps of refuse, down the sandy road used by the garbage trucks. The pickers on the garbage piles, Barrelman included, looked up in amazement as the flashy new sports car screeched down the lane, tearing up a huge cloud of dirt and cinders. A madman was driving at over a hundred miles per hour right at the Portal. And he disappeared.

Rockson was on the
same
highway bridge again. He had failed to get through to his own time. What’s more, he was hurtling the Porsche directly at an oncoming red car—a rookie-filled Toyota Camry. He started to hit the brakes and then he saw the eyes of the frantic driver. He was about to chicken out, and Rockson
wasn’t.
The rookie car swerved, jumped the curb, and tore through the railing. It sailed out far into the air before it nosed over and fell the three hundred or so feet to the pavement below.

Rockson brought the Porsche under control.

He pulled over. Traffic was light, and only an occasional car passed him by as he sat there thinking. Then as if a light bulb had lit up in his head, he realized that he hadn’t come
out
of the future in the dump, so why should he expect to go
into
the future that way. The Portal wasn’t the time-door,
this bridge was!
He had first appeared in Salt Lake City on this bridge. The time-door must be on this bridge!

He put the Porsche in gear, swung it around, and roared back the way he had just come. And nothing happened. He merely came to the end of the bridge. He hit the brakes, swerved, repeated the process, going to the other end of the highway bridge and back several times. He even tried it on the wrong side of the road, against traffic, chickening out a few more hapless drivers.

Still nothing. Sirens were wailing everywhere now. He swerved to the right side of the roadway, and took an exit. He tore down several side streets until he found a warehouse district and stopped the car. The pounding in his ears was his heartbeat. They would be looking for his car now. He’d walk back to the dump, get the compound gun back that he gave Barrelman.

As he walked back, using the under-the-elevated-highway route, he tried to figure out why he couldn’t go back to his own time.

Wait a minute! If the time-storm that had brought him to Salt Lake City had been
created
by the nuke war—no wonder he couldn’t get back! The nuke war hadn’t happened yet! There
was
no time-tunnel! What he had tried to do was impossible. For now.

Rockson reasoned, logically, that he’d have to wait until the exact date and time of the nuke attack—September 11, 1989, 6:04
P.M.
Central Standard Time—and then try again to break through the damned Veil. He’d do his best to take Kim and his kids and his friends with him too. He’d try to save them from destruction.

When Rockson reached the dump, Barrelman handed him back his weapon.

“Told you so,” he said. “But you sure tried—I’ll hand you that. Never saw a car go so fast!”

“Maybe you know
now
how determined a guy I am,” Rock said. “Help me destroy the Chessman.”

“I can’t do that!” Barrelman looked down. “Sorry.”

“Then, I’ll fight alone,” Rock snarled. “You make me sick. You eat their garbage, live like hunted rats, yet you will not fight.”

Rock turned to leave but Barrelman shoved a piece of worn colored paper at him—a map. Rockson looked at the old, worn-out Exxon road map. The heavily creased map was a treasure. It looked like the Salt Lake City map Rock remembered from the Century City archives.

The map showed Interstate 15 and Interstate 80, coursing north-south and east-west respectively, the highways cut through the heart of the fabled city of Joseph Smith, the great religious figure of the early western expansion of the United States.

To think that this holy city now housed such an abomination as the Chessman, thought Rockson.

The garbage dump he stood in now was in the south, the rundown Park Terrace section of the city. He should be able to see Mt. Olympus, elevation 9026 feet. It was a clear day. Yet all he saw looking southeast was haze. Back to the problem at hand: Rockson had to get across town again. According to Barrelman’s running commentary as the Doomsday Warrior surveyed the crumbling, taped-together Exxon map, it would be easier if he went up along the elevated highway.

“The cameras are fewest there. Then you’ll see the signs for Route One-eighty-one. Then you’ll pass the planetarium—look for the dome. Watch out around there. It’s a favorite haunt of the rookies. Why not stay with us?”

“And eat garbage? I’m going. I’ll die a Freeman, or I will triumph—for myself and all of you.”

“Well, then, if I can’t stop you, friend . . .” Barrelman pulled out a set of keys—all corroded. “Here. Take these keys. At Eleventh Avenue and Charles Street there’s a corner shop—it used to be mine. The sign, if it’s still there, reads
HOBBY SHOP
. Model planes in the window, if those are still there—I think they are. The consultants only recently came out against hobbies. They now say people should not waste their time, that people should work more instead. Anyway, no one dared open it after they came in the middle of the night and threw me out of it. Inside the store are some things you might want. A knife—a big hunting knife. It used to be my dad’s. It’s in a box stuck up under the rear part of the counter, if they haven’t found it. There’s a sink if you need water—and you will, today’s hot.”

There was a perfectly geometric grid of pink and gray squares all across the map of the city, sixty-four in all. Rockson asked Barrelman what they were.

“Those are the control squares. After the coup, the one that made Chessman mayor, he had a block of buildings torn down every ten blocks, and had a large flower bed and walk area of cobblestones put in its place. Lots of the homeless are a result of that housing demolition. Each square has the same name as a chessboard square—you know, like King’s Three, or Queen’s Seventh. It’s another way that Chessman controls the city. It’s hard to go too far without crossing one of the squares. And the poles all around the squares have sensing devices—cameras with zoom lenses, microphones, the works. We avoid the squares if possible, wind our way around the city. But it slows you down if you’re in a hurry.”

Rock sighed. The evil control of this Chessman knew no bounds. Nearly total social control—that was what he had accomplished. Like on the TV programs Rock had watched with Kim.
Twenty questions
. . . only one answer: social order.

Barrelman confirmed that the Chessman lived in the Tabernacle most of the year, though sometimes in the winter he “castled,” meaning he moved to City Hall Tower, across town. Barrelman said, “If you manage to kill the Chessman, destroy the radio tower above the bell tower in the Tabernacle, too. That’s where the muzic comes from. Remember, use the key to my store, hole up there until late night. Don’t try to get into the Tabernacle in the daylight. Best time to try to get into the Tabernacle is probably midnight mass. Incidentally, you don’t have a chance.”

“Midnight mass? Does the Tabernacle still have religious services?” Rockson asked, ignoring the negative remark.

Barrelman smiled. “Not the usual kinds. They are all banned.
Compassion
is banned—you should know that. To feel for another citizen except in certain ways, like in marriage, is illegal. People don’t realize—can’t realize—that soon they will be homeless too. There are practically no jobs, except construction. The city must grow—upward. Housing for the rich, death for the poor. Have you seen how they clear a building they want to tear down?”

“It’s very vivid in my memory.”

“Yes . . . Good! So wait in my store, and join the flock that goes through the Temple Square—now called King’s Two Square—at midnight.” Barrelman motioned with his arm. “Come over to the crate I call home; I have something for you.” Rockson followed. The derelict reached in a corner of a packing crate and extracted a red suit. “You’ll need this—it’s a bit the worse for wear, but it will be dark . . . If you need to hide, there’s six or seven empty marble crypts in the left aisle of the Tabernacle. The covers are heavy, but they can be moved by a man with strength.

“You know, years ago, I went with my family—they’re all dead now—to the Tabernacle. That was back when things were different. There was a heavenly choir there. Beautiful voices raised in praise to the Almighty. The singing is strange now, with weird, disjointed music. A devil’s mass, I suppose. But you’ll see. Good luck. And listen . . . if you can, be sure to put out the radio tower. Possibly I can get the other homeless people to rise up if you can put out the damned muzic.”

Barrelman hugged the Doomsday Warrior. “I think you’re the bravest American I ever met, and I’ll see you Off the Board, in the Great Whatever.”

“I’m not planning to die just yet, Barrelman!”

Rockson set off, having donned the old suit. It wasn’t a bad fit—a big man had worn it. But the previous owner had obviously been endowed with a pot belly, for Rockson had to cinch the rope belt tight to keep his pants on.

He walked over the mounds of garbage and toward the elevated highway that bordered the edge of the dump, as Barrelman had directed. Lost in the inky shadows of the big roadway, he passed a few broken surveillance cameras mounted on concrete pillars under the road. Evidently falling debris—bolts and nuts from the speeding vehicles—had put out their eyes.

Perhaps the city fathers didn’t think it very important to replace the cameras, as they’d only be broken again. Moving quickly under the highway till it began getting lower to ground level, Rockson crossed half the distance back through town unobserved. Barrelman, even if he wouldn’t help directly, had given him a map, a key, a
chance.

Ten

E
ddie spotted his quarry even before it appeared as a blip on the glowing radar screen on his instrument panel.

By squinting and straining his small, close-set eyes, he could just barely make out its pale shape as it hovered near the foot of an elm tree. Or, rather, what had once been a magnificent green elm back in the old days, back before the Dutch Elm blight had turned Salt Lake City’s parks into a pathetic forest of stumps and fallen branches.

No time for these maudlin thoughts. Eddie jerked himself to attention, swung his tanklike vehicle around, and began lowering its long vacuum arm in line with the target.

“Stay right there, you sucker. You’re gone. I’m gonna blow you away,” Eddie muttered under his breath. Sweat poured down his face as he took aim. With a quiet beep, the radar let him know that he was on target: the enemy fluttered helplessly in the center of his sights. The autofocus headlamps illuminated it.

He threw his vehicle into gear, let up on the clutch, and stomped on the gas pedal to lurch quickly into firing range.

“Aaaaaiieee.” He bellowed a karate yell as he slammed his hand down on the attack button. The vacuum arm hissed, sucking in its victim and swallowing it to some dark place in the vehicle’s gut.

Eddie punched the destroy button, then relaxed his tense muscles, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and sat back smugly to listen to the sound of the brush-eater’s mighty tearing teeth as they shredded his quarry—a pizza box obviously left under the tree by a group of litterbugs who didn’t appreciate social order.

Shiftless scum. These lowlife wasted their time hanging around the park, leaving their trash behind them like the wake of a garbage scow. Don’t know the meaning of work. Or dignity.

Eddie knew what dignity was. It was a thing you didn’t have, back in the old days, if you were a small man, barely five foot four, and you worked for the Salt Lake City Parks Department wearing a baggy olive-drab jumpsuit, slogging through the parks day after day, dragging a garbage bag behind you and spearing trash on a long, pointed stick.

Then had come the coup that changed Salt Lake City for the better. The glorious, wonderful Chessman, had been rebuilding a new world of glass towers on the ruins of the old. It was the Chessman who had given Eddie his dignity, given him twenty-five tons of high-tech machinery to replace his garbage bag and stick, and given him a smart, epauletted uniform to replace the sagging jumpsuit. As his first act under the new regime, Eddie had revved up his brush-eater, trained its sites on his old jumpsuit, which lay like a heap of rags on the ground, and then he’d ground it up to a total oblivion. Since that time, Eddie—now Sergeant Eddie of the Salt Lake City Parks Police Force—spent six nights out of seven on patrol, vigilantly searching out the litter that threatened to destroy his parks.

After his battle with the pizza box, which now lay shredded in the belly of the mechanical beast that all criminals feared, he switched on the radio. There was no choice of country-western, light rock, jazz or classical music these days. Each station now broadcast only the proper music of the Chessman regime, or, as in this case, announcers exhorting pawns to work hard, to spend their money on houses, cars, furs, and the other goods that would help bring the economy back to life. And it warned them always to shun the unclean.

“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” Eddie recited his mother’s credo. He could remember her only with a bar of soap and a pail of water as she scrubbed endlessly the dishes, the floors, the clothes, and Eddie himself. He embraced the cleanliness part of it, but rejected the godliness. Belief in God had gotten his mother nowhere, especially after the economy faltered. She’d slowly rotted away from the toil and was finally done in by a teen mugger.