Doomsday Warrior 19 - America’s Final Defense (10 page)

Rock’s eyes widened and he stepped back behind the curve in the rocks. His breath came in short, sharp gasps now. Someone was in here! No, not necessarily: just because the knife looked as if it had just been dropped didn’t mean anything; it could have been dropped a day ago, a year ago. A knife was a precious thing to a primitive; one of them would never have left it behind. It was of a design that indicated foreign origin.

Had someone heard Rockson coming and dropped it in his haste to hide? He cautiously moved forward, bent, picked it up. There was a thin film of dust on it. Rockson realized that its design was somewhat familiar. Not Russian—this was a mountainman’s knife, pounded of salvaged steel. Light and strong, well balanced, faintly blue. It had been here for some time. It could not have bounced down from the hole, however. Perhaps someone had meant to leave it here. There were curious symbols on it, a strange script. He stuck the knife in his belt, went on, determined to explore the rest of the cave. He found no one, no other objects, and no way out.

A breeze disturbed the torch flame. He found a narrow hole in a stone wall, and darkness inside.

Rockson chipped away at it with the knife blade; it widened easily. He crawled inside, once the hole was sufficiently large.

There was a dark dropoff dead ahead, beyond a narrow foothold.

Rockson could barely see the floor of the chamber below, but he climbed down gingerly along the outcroppings of rock. There was no one to help him if he slipped, if he couldn’t get back up again. He dropped to the lower floor, then lifted his torch to see that he was in a wide, perfectly cut circular room. Intelligent beings had fashioned this place. Fine, smooth workmanship! This chamber reminded him of one he had seen in Pattonville, a place they stored spent nuclear fuel.

Feeling along the wall, Rockson felt something—a square indentation. He pressed his hand in it, and a hidden panel slid open in the solid stone. Light poured at him. As his eyes adjusted, his heart pounded wildly. He realized he’d found an ornate chamber much like a temple. Sculpted pillars supported the ceiling, and a stone dais rose up in the middle of the floor. On the dais stood some sort of device.

“Now, this is more like it,” he mumbled to himself, as he approached the dais, for he saw electronic equipment. Looked like a radio transmitter. He hoped to God it was. If this was just a receiver he could die here, lulled by beautiful songs, or news radio, as he starved to death.

No! Don’t think that way, Rock. Better to hope to the last, to the very last. He touched the equipment, found dusty headphones. He put on the headphones and turned knobs. The unit lit up; he’d activated the channel selector! There was a crackle. Rock thought, where’s the mike? He found it, and hands trembling, switched the Broadcast switch. There was an electronic hiss.

“Hello, anyone?” he said. “Is anyone receiving this?”

To his surprise, an image formed in the air of the room. A holographic projection of an old man, in a torn and frayed dungaree jacket. The man had long yellow-gray hair, green eyes, lots of wrinkles. He spoke in crackling radio tones.

“Howdy, son! What’s your beef? Where are you?”

“Hey,” Rockson exclaimed, “I didn’t think this would happen. Are you—”

“Yes, I am real, and I’m receiving your broadcast with this device. It is a television-projector receiver. Like a visi-telephone. Your dime—what do you want, son?”

“Well,” Rock said, “am I glad to speak to you—or anyone. I have a problem . . . I’ve fallen into a cave. I’m near Mt. Jubal—you know where that is?”

“Ah, yes,” said the old-timer. “My, you certainly have an affinity for danger. You must surely have been an explorer in some past life.”

“Possibly,” Rockson muttered, somewhat disturbed at the answer. “But philosophy doesn’t interest me right now-—I want out of here. Can you get me help?”

“No. This is a visi-phone, that is all, son. Sorry. I’m just a ham. I’m not near no Mount Jubal. I live in Canada, near Moose Lake. You know where that is?”

“Can you ask someone else to contact me, get me out of here?”

“You can do that yourself, if you call the Mounties, son.”

“Damn it,” Rock cursed. “Mount Jubal is in Colorado, a thousand miles from Canada. Any other ideas?”

“What am I son, a goddamned information center? Oh, very well, sit back, relax, think of a carrot, then think of a bird. You can just float up out of any cave. I’ve done it myself.” The old-timer said all of this in a bored voice.

Rockson realized he’d reached a kook with this strange radio, or whatever it was. The old coot was too far away to help, and too crazy, probably, even to contact someone else. Angrily, he moved his hand to twist the channel knob, to search for another signal.

“Don’t do that, son. I can read your mind with that there device, and I can tell you’re a smart ’un. Now, you just let your Uncle Julius guide you outta that cave. Relax.”

“You can read my mind? Over a thousand miles?”

“Yup. Now you just sit pat and let me enter your mind. Do that and I’ll get you outta there in two shakes of a snake’s tail.”

Something happened. Rockson felt his astral soul-body separating from his body, floating up through a layer of solid gray mountain. Just like that. It was like he was a balloon! He broke free, into the bright sunshine in seconds, moved in the air like a bird. The feeling was wonderful, exhilarating.

“Come back, son,” a voice cried out . . . the old man’s. “Set yourself down on the ground; my little trick is over.”

Somehow, Rock complied. And he sat there, in a patch of snow, feeling very weird indeed. He doubted his senses, as a matter of fact. But the snow felt real.

“Well, I’m out,” Rock exclaimed, taking in a deep breath. “But I don’t know how. Hey, old-timer,” he yelled, and his voice echoed.
“Thanks!”

There was no answer, but for a moment Rockson thought he saw the smiling face of a Glower, one of the strange race of inside-out beings that lived out in the radioactive western deserts, on the face of the mountain. It had looked like his old friend, the being known as Turquoise Spectrum. But it couldn’t be.

Then Rockson shrugged; bundled up his collar to the cold air, and set out for the south, in the direction his men should have taken. When he met Chen, he was led back to the others. He refused to explain what had occurred. Why let them think he’d gone loony?

Nine

A
fter another three hours of trekking, Rockson noticed that the hills nearby suddenly looked like they’d grown porcupine quills. He sighed and called a halt to the column. Too many porcupine quills . . . maybe a thousand.

“What’s up, Rock,” Chen asked.

“I think we’ve found the Millies,” he whispered.

There was no chance to reach for their weapons, so they meekly surrendered. The painted, naked women-warriors were beautiful but deadly looking. They wore bone necklaces and anklets and little else, save for the human skull earrings and skullcaps.

The women had them trussed up in jig time, and then the men were unceremoniously thrown over the saddles of their ’brids. The horses and the chariot-of-hellfire were walked along down the pass into a large hangar-shaped building jammed between two mountains. It looked to Rock like an Egyptian temple, once they were taken inside. A giant throne rose up between flickering torches. Only women—luscious, beautiful, cruel looking women—were present. There were piles of human skulls everywhere, Rock observed from his upside-down position.

“I don’t like this,” Detroit muttered in true movieland style. Rock winked back at him, but he, too, was pessimistic.

Archer was less perturbed. The simple giant was fairly drooling at the sight of all the beautiful women. “No worry, Rock, they like me. Me sure.” Indeed, the Millies seemed to look at Archer with wide smiles on their narrow green-eyed faces. Still, the women roughly threw Archer off his mount and pushed him along with their sword tips, just the way the other men had been handled.

“What breasts,” Archer exclaimed. “What pussy.”

“Oh, shut up,” Chen complained.

Rock was thrown to the foot of the throne where, on a striped narga-beast skin, sat a large-busted woman painted green. “I am She-Who-Is-the-Best,” the head woman shouted. She glared at Rockson with her deep green eyes. “I am Millie the Fourth, ruler of the land of Yes-Yes. We are the maintainers of the Goddess Millie. No doubt you wished to spy on us, steal our ritual.”

“Millie?” Rock smiled, getting up. “You mean Milis, the rocket?”

“
Silence!
Do not speak of her without bowing low.”

Rock bowed. And then he winked his charming best at the woman.

“That’s better. Hmmm . . . come here.”

He went up to her, walking rather ungracefully, for his steps were restricted by the gold chains about his ankles. He was careful to not lose his balance. He had his hands chained behind his back, too. No way to cushion any fall. Besides, he wanted to look confident.

Millie the Fourth took his chin in her long-fingernailed hand and studied Rock’s face. His mismatched left eye winked again at her. He smiled his charming best once more.

“You are good breeding stock,” she concluded, letting go of him. “All of you are. You for beauty, and for strength, I think, as well. The others look fit enough, if plain. Except
that
one.” She pointed at Archer. “He is very strong and virile. He will please many Millies, I am sure.”

Some of the tribesgirls giggled. “And if he gets tired of doing his sexual duty, of course, there is the gna-tebit juice aphrodisiac drink. The duty must be fulfilled,” she concluded.

Rock started to explain that they had come in peace, and that they needed the Milis rocketship for an important mission.

“Silence!” she cried out. “You will be allowed to enter the Goddess if you wish. It is written that men will come to enter her. But only on one condition.” She smiled lasciviously, taking a bite of an apple. “You each must please five of us Millies apiece in one night. Is it too much to ask?”

“Sex in exchange for the rocket?” Rock didn’t see anything wrong with a trade like that. But
five
times . . . it was a challenge.

“Yes. Do you not see our sad state? We girls are bereft of offspring. We are unhappy, lost, because we bear no children. The last man to pass here was many, many years ago. And the bastard was sterile. He had to be destroyed. You men are not sterile, are you?” She glared at Rockson.

“No. Definitely not,” Rock insisted. “I like the deal. Unchain us and—”

She pressed the apple to his lips, and Rock bit in and swallowed.

“The deal is sealed,” Millie the Fourth said. “Release their hands and feet. Lead them all to the bridal suites—all except this one.”

The women warriors unchained the others and, giggling now, kissed the other men and fed them fruit, while they led them away, unprotesting.

“Rock—is this safe?” Chen shouted over his shoulder as he left.

Rock shouted back, “Enjoy it. And remember, you’re doing it for your country, and for all mankind.”

Rockson was unchained and went off with only the Queen Millie. She wanted him all to herself. Fine with him. Better than a spear in the gut.

The green-head was hellfire in bed, Rock soon found out. She had orgasms one after another, each time making a sound like a locomotive crashing. He was never so exhausted than when she finally fell asleep. His back was raked into red lines by her sharp nails. She only catnapped, and shook his shoulder: “That was
wonderful,”
she said, rubbing ointment on his nail scratches. “Sorry, I get carried away! We Millies have a gene mutation. One of our ancestor’s genes was fused with a part of a cat’s genetic makeup. We are mutants as a result of the war—the nuke war. I cannot help but scratch a man when I get excited.”

“Easy
with that ointment,” he said, ignoring her excuses. She kissed his neck as she rubbed him. He heard a low purr issuing from her green-lipsticked lips.

After the hours of lovemaking during which they’d hopefully impregnated all the Millies, the team was reunited. Rockson didn’t have to ask whether or not his men had fully served their country. They all wore candy-eating grins. The other women fairly hung to their ankles and arms, caressing them, and running their hands over their hard-muscled bodies, which were now covered with ointment. The men, like Rockson, were all naked except for the Millie-provided green loincloths.

“Well, we all look like a fit and happy bunch of savages,” Rock commented. Then he turned to Millie the Fourth and asked, “Now will you let us go to the rocket—I mean, to the Goddess Millie?”

“Yes, of course! I know I will bear the greatest child. Of course, it will be female. Our children, due to the gene-altering radiation our foreparents endured, are always girls. Mine will be called—say, what shall I call her?”

Rock thought a moment and said, “Call her Ronakimcharity the Fifth.”

“Yes. That sounds very noble—and
long,”
said Millie the Fourth. “Proper for a queen!”

The Freefighters were led down a long, torchlit corridor into the heart of the rectangular concrete building. The Millie Queen explained further about the prophecy as they walked in the semi-darkness: “It has been written that one day our great metal Goddess Millie shall be visited by men of iron, men who will renew our lifestream with their virility. These virile ones—you men—will enter the Goddess, and she will rise up into the heavens where she belongs. There she will, legend says, have her powers restored. The Goddess will save us all. Now it comes to pass, as the great Millie the First has written!”