Doomsday Warrior 06 - American Rebellion (11 page)

Rock stood up to his full height and looked away from the meat slab on the floor. “I am Ted Rockson,” he said simply to the workers. “You were saying last night that he would never come to save you. Well
I
have come! I’m going to get you all out of here, every fucking one of you.”

They stared at him in disbelief. My God, he must be the Rockson to dispatch Foster so easily. The Rockson had come here for them—then they were worth something.
The Rockson
wouldn’t save worthless slime. His presence filled them with a magical sensation, an emotion they hadn’t experienced for as long as they had memories—joy. The emotion of joy.

“We’re going to fight them—starting right now. An hour or two before dawn—the best time to strike. I need you to help me. In return I’ll blow this whole damned dump to hell. You’ll live like men from now on.”

The slaves looked at him, their minds filled with fear and confusion. Men? They
wanted
to be
men,
but could they?

“I can’t promise any of you that you’ll live. But are you alive now? You’ll be striking a blow for every slave in this world. And if the others in this living hell see you, they’ll join in. And with all of us fighting at once, the Nazis will fall.”

He raised his heel and slammed it down into the concrete, making an exploding pistol-like sound.

“Yes, I come,” the intelligent one who had questioned him the night before, said. He stepped forward. Just a sprout of a man, still in his teens. Yet Rockson could see by his hard set eyes, his firm jaw, that he was someone to be trusted.

The Doomsday Warrior reached over and rested his hand on the teen’s shoulder for a second. “By the authority vested in me as Commanding Officer of the United States Free Fighting Army, I appoint you lieutenant—what’s your name again? Your
real
name?” Rockson asked with a grin.

“Lyons, sir. John Lyons.”

“Lieutenant Lyons. You’ll help me whip things in order.”

“Yes sir,” Lyons said, raising his hand in an awkward salute in Russian, not American style, as the Reds were the only people he had ever seen saluting.

“I guess I’ll come too,” another man spoke out. “My brain was dead, Mister Rockson. What you did to us last night, said to us. You woke me up. I don’t care if I die—I’ve been dead for the last seven years. I—I was a farmer before that,” he said, his eyes misting over for a second. Then he looked up with a fierceness in his eyes. “I’d like to have a chance to die fighting against these bastards. I’d like that a lot.”

He walked over and joined Rock and Lyons. Something was changing about them all now. It was almost as if the Rockson had made them see something about themselves. And once seen, it couldn’t be forgotten. He had offered them a road they had to travel now. The road toward
being men.
Another and then another stepped forward until within a minute 75 of the 150 man barracks had come over.

The rest, their minds still set in the ways of the rodent, the ways of the animal living in its own filth stared with fear and loathing at the group across the way. Slaves were not supposed to rebel. Let there be no trouble.
We will be fed, we have a place to sleep,
they thought.

Rockson led his group out, telling them to crouch low so as not to be spotted. They headed down one of the darker side streets rather than down the main truck thoroughfare through the middle of the slave sector. They managed to avoid guards for about two blocks. Then they rounded a corner and saw a German machine-gun post. Two of the three inside the sandbag enclosure were asleep. The third, nearly asleep himself as he read a German propaganda magazine.

Rockson motioned his mini-army of newly freed slaves to follow behind him, cautioning them to keep silent. They tried to carry out his whispered orders as he tried to get them to fan out and creep up on the objective. But they hadn’t moved like men for so long, it was difficult to remember the motions, and they were clumsy in their unpracticed deployment.

Rock crept right up to the reading German and rose up behind him. He grabbed over the sandbags at the helmet strap and pulled hard to the right at the same second his other hand slammed into the spinning face with a fist made of human steel. The man’s nose pancaked in and his eyes rolled up like egg whites. Rock jumped into the enclosure and slowly lowered the still breathing body to the ground as the team he had gathered around him dove on top of the other two, making quick if somewhat messy work of them.

They headed on as Rock searched for the balcony-ringed tower where he had seen Rona.
That
was her name.
Rona!
Beautiful Rona. He knew everything. Who he was, who she as. Where they were and what had happened. That last shell from the tank. It had just taken him right out of his head.

“Obviously,
they
weren’t aware of who he was, and had just put him to work with the other slaves!

Mutants luck!

And somehow the Nazis had gotten hold of Rona too. There was no time for subtlety. They’d just have to smash their way in and rescue Rona, then get the hell out of there.

He saw it, the tower, rising bizarrely above the other squat utilitarian cement buildings, ten stories into the air. There were guards at the entrance, but just a few. The Nazis were overconfident. They couldn’t imagine these humble slaves rebelling. So much the better. Again the rag-tag force swept forward, the slaves’ hearts starting to come alive as they felt their own power, their ability to destroy those who had destroyed them. They came into the five-guard post in a tidal wave of fists and feet, knives and slivers of glass. And within seconds five bloody bodies tumbled to the dusty ground, as dead as if they’d never been born.

Rockson ordered half the men to stay below as the slaves gathered up the weapons of the dead Nazis. Lyons took up a sawed-off Kalasnikov “autofire” in his hands and held it proudly. The others as well grabbed for guns. Men—they were becoming more like men by the second.

Rockson moved up the circular outside stairs of the steel and aluminum tower three steps at a time with the speed of a cat. His neck still hurt like the blazes.

At the fourth floor, he suddenly came upon a seated guard who looked up startled. But Rockson didn’t hesitate, continuing forward with his motion, spinning his right leg up and across the low table in front of the German. The heel of his boot caught the Nazi’s neck smashing it backward, crushing the man’s larynx and vocal cords. The German fell to the floor, gasping for air, his face instantly growing red as an apple. Rockson turned and flew up the stairs.

He hesitated just before the tenth floor, edging around the wall of the entrance room. Just as he expected. Three of them—and these more alert looking than the others. Probably Von Reislings’s personal S.S. unit. The nice thing about being in a hurry is not having to make plans, Rockson thought.

He stood up and walked briskly across the floor with a big smile on his face.

“Jawohl comrades, mein kampf est der Führer’s.”

The troopers were so taken aback by the fool and his pidgin English that they forgot who and what they were for just a second or two. Enough time for Rockson to walk the thirty feet separating them. As he rushed toward them, they snapped out of their daze and reached for their submachine guns.

But a second or two is the difference between life or death in 2089
A.D.
Rockson moved like a streak of lightning, diving right into the midst of them. As he landed, his right foot came up under the groin of the man in front of him, while his fists made contact with two faces. The men dropped to the ground stunned, as the Doomsday Warrior turned in a flash and shot out a kick to the stomach of the fourth who was just raising his sub in a sharp arc. The gun exploded as he fell backward vomiting. Rockson pulled himself out of the way, spinning backward in the opposite direction. The shrieking hail of .9 mm slugs bit into the wall across the room and raced up the side, catching the fifth guard, slicing him right up the center. From his balls up his stomach and chest to the top of his head. A sludge of his innards slopped out like a bloody tidal wave onto the carpeted floor.

He rushed past the sprawled Nazis and through the door they had been guarding. There she was, lying naked on the bed, covered by only the thinnest of silk sheets. Her large breasts were revealed as she sat up, her face grim, expecting the worst. Then she saw his face by the light reflecting in from the outer room.

“Rock—it’s
you,
oh God.”

She leaped from the bed, letting the sheet fall from her and ran to him wrapping her arms around him, pressing her breasts, her hips, her legs against his live body.

“Oh Rock, I felt your presence from the moment you arrived here and I ‘sent-out’ like you taught me—but I never received anything back. And when I saw you below, moving the bodies days ago, I saw you look at me, yet you didn’t seem to recognize me, and . . .”

She seemed about to burst into tears as she held the man she loved as tightly as a python around a rabbit. The toughest woman in C.C., a fighter who could take on the best of them, her heart melted in the safety and strength of Rockson’s arms.

“I know, Rona,” Rock said, pulling his head around so they were face to face. “I had a case of amnesia. Complete and total—from the blast. It wasn’t until the local bully in my barracks tried to do me in tonight—the bastard hit me with a goddamned hammer—that I came out of it. I suppose I owe him a favor in a way. Well maybe I did him one . . . Anyway, we’ve got to get the hell out of here. Some of the other slave workers are with me, they’re guarding the front entrance.”

“Slaves who will fight? I’ve never seen that before,” Rona said. She rushed back to her closet and slipped into a Nazi work uniform: khaki pants and shirt, and olive-green multi-pocketed commando jacket. Von Reisling had let her order them, having them of course, cleaned and perfumed first. She had ripped the emblems off.

“Well, I don’t know if these slaves can fight,” Rock said, “but they sure as hell seem willing to try. And that’s half the battle.”

They headed quickly out the door, Rona delivering a ripping front kick with the toe of her shoe to the one Nazi who seemed like he might be able to try and rise. He quickly joined the others with scarcely a groan. The two Freefighters grabbed subs and pistols from the guards and strapped on ammunition belts.

“It feels good to be packing again Rock,” Rona smiled at the Doomsday Warrior as they started back down the long circular stairway.

“No woman should be without one,” Rock shot back as they picked up speed.

“Goddamned right,” Rona answered, never one not to get the last word, taking two steps at a time behind him, “not when 5,000 Nazis want to worship you like a goddess one minute and rape you the next.”

They hit the bottom steps and tore into the street, guns at the ready in their upraised hands. Rock joined the free slaves who seemed somewhat upset. They pointed to the left, barely able to speak, edging back around him as if seeking protection. The Doomsday Warrior turned and looked at the five tanks and 100 German troops advancing on them in a huge column about 150 yards away.

The would-be freedom army looked at him desperately. He was the Rockson, surely he would come up with something.

“What we do?” a voice called from out of the crowd. “What we do?”

For the life of him, Rockson had no answer.

Twelve

“T
his
way,” Rona yelled out as the group stood frozen still, like rabbits who await the approach of the wolf.
“Move it!”
She pointed back inside. “There’s some kind of tunnel,” she said. “I heard Von Reisling mention it once to one of his underlings. He was asking if the basement escape equipment was completed and the man said ‘yes’.”

Rock directed the free slaves, who had guns taken from the Nazis, to set up a line of fire on the advancing troops. They needed every second they could get. Rock and Rona tore around the main floor of the cylindrical tower searching for the hidden entrance.

“Here it is,” Rona cried out as she found a button that made a hidden wood paneled steel door slide open. They went down the stairs and found below the building’s electric and microwave power stations. Off to one side was a tunnel, only five feet in diameter, a perfectly round tube covered with a smooth shiny metal. Right at the mouth of the tunnel, which seemed to stretch on forever into the unlit darkness, sat a small tubular vehicle about six feet long. A cockpit sat atop it, which was open.

“Just in case he was ever late for lunch,” Rock said as Rona walked over to investigate it. The slaves began pouring down the stairway behind the Freefighters.

“Rockson! Rockson?” Lyons yelled, “they’re closing in. Our firepower isn’t stopping them anymore. Already six of us are shot. You must come.”

“Get the men down here. We’ll go through this tunnel here. Blow it up behind us. But fast, man.
Fast.
”

Lyons rushed back up and began herding the men down. Rock could hear the tank shells landing just outside as the damp cement floor below him shook with vibrations.

He turned back to Rona. “Does the thing work? Maybe we could—”

Before he could finish the sentence, Rona, who had been leaning forward on the side of the cigar-shaped shining aluminum/magnesium craft, lost her balance on an oil slick on the floor and fell into the contraption. As if programmed by computer, the curved cockpit dome snapped down into place, instantly sealing her in. The craft seemed to shake and then emitted a high-pitched whirring sound. Rockson saw that it was inching forward down the tunnel and with animal speed he leaped forward. If he could open the cockpit, maybe it would stop. Rona too was struggling to open it.

There didn’t appear to be any way. Now the thing took off. Like a snake striking, it settled down and just shot forward into the pitch black perfectly round tunnel. Rockson was knocked by the takeoff from his hold on the cockpit, but as he fell he reached out a hand and grabbed hold of a luggage rack on the very back. He flew behind the screaming, crackling steel cigar, hanging on for dear life.