Doomsday Warrior 15 - American Ultimatum (10 page)

“Rock,” Chen blurted out as he tore his face away from the side window. “Before we all start breaking out the champagne, I hope I’m reading that gas gauge wrong. Does it say empty?”

Rockson hit the gauge with his fist. It went to full. “Aw, it was just stuck,” he said. “No sweat!”

Ten

N
ear the town of Jabal Al Uwaynat, right at the common borders of Egypt, Libya, and the Sudan, was located what had been termed many centuries before “The Bloody Triangle.” There, countless men had died in ceaseless disputes and wars, and now four thousand more men gathered along the three hills that surrounded the field of rocks that were arranged in a bizarre swirling pattern—a pattern laid down by slaves thousands of years earlier, and long since disturbed by wind and storm. Their original outlines of lions, dragons, gods, and demons were hardly recognizable.

In the center of the rock garden a large winged stone sculpture crumbled at its outer edges, mutilated but for its wings and long serpent’s tail. On its back, in a hollow twenty feet in diameter that had been carved out for ritual sacrifice, a fire burned, red flames rising up to the sky twenty, thirty feet. Men around its edges poured fuel on it and worked immense bellows so that the fire roared up at the dawn sky as if challenging the sun out of its cave of darkness.

The men on the surrounding hilltops were clad in myriad colorful and garish costumes: long, flowing robes of purples, oranges, greens, and golds. They wore beads and silver and jeweled necklaces. The men had proud, fierce faces of brown, black, cocoa, in which one could see the effects of their warrior genes. They whirled and jumped up and down, holding their spears and short swords, their ancient rifles, their shields made of elephant, zebra, and crocodile hide so thick and difficult for any blade to penetrate.

They lived to be fighters; they and their people had indeed fought for many centuries. And from the way each slightly differently garbed or beaded group glanced from hill to hill, it was obvious they were not used to being with each other. Each of these sturdy desert tribes was bunched together, separated from the other tribes.

The Libyan, Egyptian, and Sudanese desert fighters who had been gathered here were ancient enemies. Their fathers and father’s fathers had murdered one another. Yet now they stood gathered together within spear’s throw or rifle shot of one another. The tribes watched as the flames rising from a large pit on the back of the sacred sun serpent statue rose ever higher, beckoning the sun to rise as the stars quickly faded in the early moments of dawn.

Suddenly there were gasps and cheers from the assembled thousands as they saw a cloud of dust coming in toward them from the gray desert, beyond the half-crumbled gargoyle. It was
Him
—the Great One—the Man-God Kil-Lov who had descended from the heavens to earth to carry out the prophecy. The Ka Amun. The Man-God who would carry out the prophecies of total rule, of conquering the world, of uniting all the tribes under the rule of his thousand-year reign.

As the dust cloud drew closer, they could see the priests of Amun walking in their long white robes covered with arcane symbols. They carried large religious symbols, carved from wood or chiseled from stone, aloft on poles. Some were heavy enough to take six, even eight men to hold them up.

On each side of the line of sun priests, drummers pounded out smashing beats on immense gazelle-hide drums which were carried along on straps around their shoulders. And behind them, other men blew on long brass instruments, sending out a cacophonous trumpeting of heart-stopping tones. The sheer spectacle of it all made the superstitious desert nomad warriors’ bones tremble. If there had been any skeptics among the gathered about the power of the Amun cult, they were rapidly vanishing.

And suddenly they saw
Him,
in the center of the line of priests—the Man-God himself, the one who had descended from the skies on fire-feet and landed on the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The angel sent from the Sun God himself, a piece of the god, burning with Amun’s unquenchable flame. Colonel Killov was carried atop a golden throne. He was dressed in the finest of Egyptian priestly garb—with long white robe adorned with precious jewels at every seam. A large triangular-shaped golden hat sat atop his head, and golden paint had been dabbed in hieroglyphs on his emaciated face and along his boney arms.

Ka Amun smiled as he saw the waiting army of fighters bowing down to him, screaming out their peculiar high-pitched wail of obedience.

It had been but three months now since Killov had parachuted from the skies but already, he thought proudly, he was rebuilding his empire—more powerful than ever. All that a man needed was his mind, and sheer utter determination. Not any man. Only one as ruthless and cunning as Killov could have come this far. Could have survived his parachute-burning fall from orbit. Could have survived three assassination attempts on his life since then. But then he had survived assassins even worse than anything these desert bastards could throw at him.

Tonight would mark the beginning of the next stage in his plans for conquest. This dawn he would expand his armies nearly twofold with the addition of many of the fighters around him, those who stood on the hills to see the Man-God. They would all join, of that he had no doubt. For he was about to give them a little demonstration of his powers. One they would not soon forget. And above all, men respected power. And obeyed fear.

Ka Amun raised his hands as the entourage came into the great rock field, and a roar went up from the collected warriors. At the very instant his hands, also painted gold, pointed up toward the sky, a blare of trumpets sounded again, and the bellows hidden behind the gargoyle blew harder so as to make the flames within the pit on top of it rise up in an almost blinding blast of white and yellow. At that very instant, the tip of the sun poked up over the far horizon, and another gasp went up from the masses. It truly
was
the son of the Sun. For he controlled its very rising. No mere mortal man could do such a thing. They prostrated themselves by the thousands, bowing and humbling themselves, hitting themselves with whips and chains on their arms and backs, to show their devotion before the Great One, the Ka Amun.

Killov was carried around the edges of the rock field on his golden sedan chair by a dozen Sudanese warriors stripped to the waist and crisscrossed with leopard-skin belts. He let them all see, feel his power. Then he was seated in the center. He rose from the sedan chair and walked out, moving slowly, like a ghost, floating above the ground. And then he spoke. Killov had managed to get hold of a public-address system from one of the Russian outposts they had overrun a month before. A mini-microphone sat just inside his robe. Through wireless transmitter it was relayed to two loudspeakers hidden inside the chair that would make him sound like the Man-God that he pretended to be.

“Oh, followers of Amun,” Killov screamed out, raising his arms high as if calling the sun to rise just for him. “I ask you to look up as my father, the sun, breaks from his death sleep and brings warmth and golden life to the day once again.”

“Oh, Great One,” they chanted back in English, the sacred tongue, the tongue of Amun, as they bowed even faster, rising and bowing down, smashing their faces into the ground so the Man-God could see their willing devotion, “speak to us!”

“I come down to earth—to free you. To free you from pain, from fear, from confusion. Now that you are to be my warriors, when you fight and die under my banner—there is only eternal salvation, there is paradise in my cleansing flames.”

“Paradise,” they shouted back en masse. “Paradise, Ka Amun.”

“Yea, let the sun rise.” He waved his hands at the sky as the high priests gathered around him, shaking their staffs and chanting various supplications for the sun to rise once again, a ritual they had carried out for over three thousand years. A ritual that always made the sun rise.

“Without us—without the Great Amun,” Killov screamed into the mike as the words blasted out over the ears of the assembled nomad fighters, making them tremble, “there would be no sun. It would not rise. There would be only eternal night. And all would be cast into darkness, cast into a frozen death more horrible than the most terrible nightmares.
Bow to Amun!”

“Bow to Amun!”
the assembled priests screamed out as they formed a large circle around the Man-God and raised their staffs once again, as if supplicating the sun. And the burning orb rose higher, smoothly riding the morning breezes into the purple sky.

“Without
Amun
—you are worse than dogs, worse than ants, worse than lifeless sand,” Killov screamed again, and the bowing masses pushed their faces even deeper into the desert, praying that the Great One should not catch their eye, should not single them out for his wrath.

“Yea, look up into the sky,” Killov commanded. “Look up, up. See that sun follow the commands of Amun, see it rise to give warmth and life to the Sudan, to Chad, to Egypt, to the Earth itself.”

“See it rise!”
the assembled priests echoed out.

“And see this,” Killov went on, as he raised his glowing red cylinder-crystal—the Qu’ul levitation-stick—and pointed it at three rock slabs each the size of a truck. “Raise your heads,” the Man-God commanded the sprawled masses, and slowly, scarcely daring to, they lifted their heads a fraction of an inch at a time and raised their tightly squeezed eyelids. They weren’t sure whether they dared look straight at the Man-God or disobey his orders. But they decided that it was better to obey, to overcome their terror and watch, as He commanded.

“Behold the power of Amun,” Killov croaked out as he quickly popped down another Orbitol pill, one of the drugs the priests had been supplying him with. He had been up for days now, planning his campaigns, planning this event which would solidify a warrior army around him. But he was growing tired again. The Orbitol slammed into his sagging nervous system like a rocket and his eyes popped open, his heart quickened as if he was in a sprint. “See the power.” He pointed the levitator-cylinder at the three clustered slabs of granite.

They rose up side by side smoothly, about ten feet apart, as the warriors cried out in awe. Killov, after his initial destruction of the Great Sphinx, had learned the art of the anti-grav device well. He had practiced with it night and day, wanting to be its master, wanting to be able to use it to fit his own designs. And he had learned well.

The three slabs, each big enough to crush a house, rose up and hovered over his head about fifty feet up. They began spinning each in a different direction like immense rectangular records on a turntable, not wobbling or shaking a bit. The desert warriors, if they had been frightened before, were positively shaking with fear now. Most of them had not seen the rock-flying powers of the Man-God, though they had heard about them. Some had scoffed at such a power. They didn’t now. Tears flowed from their eyes to be this close to the Ka Amun and witness his miracles.

“Bring out the prisoners, the traitors,” Killov screamed, and from a circle of priests in elaborate jewel-hatted garb were dragged out a dozen men all screaming hysterically. Their hands and feet were chained together.

“These men have betrayed the Sun God, have betrayed Kil-Lov—son of Amun,” Killov bellowed. “They believed they could challenge my power.” He laughed, a cackle that echoed through the hills and made even the priests of Amun shudder inside. The frantic, innocent prisoners were dragged forward to the center of the rock garden, where Killov stood. They were placed side by side, spread-eagled out along a flat rock twenty feet long, eight feet wide. Their chains were pulled tight at feet and wrists so they were tightly pulled down against the rock, unable to move.

“Now watch—watch and remember what happens to any who dare betray Amun,” Killov bellowed into the mike, his eyes growing bright with the anticipation of pain. In fact, the twelve had committed relatively minor infractions—stealing bread or a pair of shoes, being several hours late for guard duty. But Killov allowed no mistakes, not one. And these would be far more useful to him as examples of his iron rule than their meager lives were worth otherwise.

He turned his hand, holding the glowing anti-grav stick, and the three slabs over his head spun slowly away from him and right over the long sacrifice stone on which the sputtering and crying men were chained down.

“Oh, Sun God, we send more souls into your burning mouth,” Killov intoned, and he lowered his hand. He moved slowly, not wanting it to be over too fast, and the three immense slabs dropped down an inch at a time as if on invisible pulleys. They reached the flesh of the men, and then slowly, terribly slowly, Killov lowered them further. There was a sudden chorus of terrible screams that even the highest on the hills could hear. Sounds that covered them with gooseflesh. And as they watched the slabs grind inexorably down on the chained victims, a wall of blood shot out from the sides of the rock-sandwich. Under such high pressure it gushed out a good twenty feet in every direction in a red waterfall spray. Killov pressed the huge rocks down even further so they touched against the slab, and then he turned them back and forth like a man squashing an ant beneath his boots.

He let them rest there silently for a few seconds, and there wasn’t a sound anywhere. Then he raised them up again, their undersides covered with blood. The nomad masses looked down breathlessly at the mess that was left behind. It was no longer recognizable as human. It was no longer recognizable as much of anything, really, beyond a tangled mess of red organs crushed like pudding dripping, and skulls and bones smashed into a wet dust. Nothing remained of the men who had disobeyed Him.

Killov raised his hand again, and now the killing rocks rose up over his head and began spinning like tops, spraying out the blood in a circle around him. Spinning like meteors, like red nightmares that would go into the dreams of all the men who had just witnessed the carnage created by Killov’s very special weapon.