Doomsday Warrior 15 - American Ultimatum (21 page)

Sesostris held the thing as if cradling a child, and started walking slowly, retracing his steps back through the mummies, masks, and monster-memorabilia of a long-gone era.

“We must go slow,” the priest said. “It cannot be covered in any way, must always be allowed to ‘breathe.’ You two will protect me. We must reach Killov’s storage place for the Qu’ul.”

“We’re with you, pal, all the way,” Rock said, trying to give encouragement to the man. What pressure he was under! The mental pressure of not dropping the only goddamned thing that could save the world was too damned much!

Naturally, they got lost! The high priest gave up on trying to find the elephants, and instead took a steep staircase. To a dead end!

“We are out,” the wizard man said triumphantly as he strode onto the top landing.

Rock didn’t see any exit door! But the wizened priest moved forward a few yards, holding the Ra jar out toward the wall, as if he was offering it some food. Then the whole thing seemed to pop out of its slot, and daylight flooded in. The stone that had fallen out to the sand was a good eight feet in diameter, and they stepped through easily and out onto the desert. They were right at the base of the great pyramid.

“Now we must make our way back to the war bulls—and—” But Sesostris’s mouth couldn’t even finish the sentence, for suddenly there were nets being dropped over them, steel-mesh woven cables that completely entangled Rockson and Rahallah before they could move a muscle. They fell to the ground and looked on in horror through the metal web at Colonel Killov. The KGB nemesis was clad in a bizarre, overdone jewel-and-feather outfit. He walked up to Sesostris.

“Give it to me,” he said, holding out both of his boney hands, his eyes lit with a drug-fueled fire. “Give it to me, my priestly friend.” Killov grinned, so his face looked truly skull-like. Even the high priest, who had seen much of death in his day, shuddered at this face.

“No, never,” Sesostris said firmly, holding onto the thing. “Besides, if you take this from me now, before it’s been united with the Qu’ul, we’ll all go up in fire.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Killov replied. “I have a way of controlling the power of the Ra sticks. As for you—your life means nothing to me. I have searched for a year to find those Ra sticks. Now that you have brought them to me, I will be invincible! Kill him!”

Two men suddenly rushed forward before the aged priest could move an inch to defend himself. Two long narrow swords went through his armoring from each side of the restraining net, straight into his chest. He gasped out, “No!” He was having trouble breathing, and Killov reached out and suddenly grabbed the crystal jar through an opening in the net, before the dying man could stop him. Sesostris threw his arms around his chest as if he was trying to hold it in, and then his head snapped back and a gush of bright red blood came cascading out of his open mouth.

When the two robed attackers pulled their swords back out, the blades were followed by two fountains of red.

Sesostris toppled backwards into the sand, staining it a purplish color which faded fast as the thirsty desert drank down all that he offered.

“You sick bastards,” Rockson screamed from his netting trap. “That man was a high priest to thousands of people, a holy man.”

“Sick? Yes.” Killov laughed as he looked down at his squirming prisoners. “But stupid, no.” He nodded, and two men rushed over with a dark blanket of some kind. The weaving was made of a super-fine material, almost like a spider’s web. Killov placed the crystal inside the black material, closed it around the crystal container, and then tied it at the top with a knot of the same material that was braided together into a thicker twine.

“The net of precious Kanth webs.” Killov grinned down at Rockson. It made him feel so good just to have captured the man he hated above all others on the face of the earth. But to see him witness this total humiliation and defeat on his part was an unparalleled thrill! All the pain and suffering that Killov had endured for the last few years, all of it suddenly seemed worth it!

“It’s controlled once inside the Kanth web,” the colonel said, wanting Rockson to understand just how clever the KGB ruler could be. “Modern technology actually, not ancient. It’s a coil of superconducting wires made of plastic. When a current is sent through the web it creates a field which nothing can penetrate. Nothing can get through the tangled flow of currents. The Ra sticks are blind in there. Blind as a man with both his eyes plucked out. And they are at my disposal. Thank you for this wonderful new weapon! You see, if these Ra sticks can neutralize the Qu’ul, there has got to be a way they can enhance them too! My scientists will soon discover how.”

Twenty-Three

T
he nets were gathered up, and Rockson and Rahallah were carried atop Killov’s Nubian slaves’ backs like animals. They were put up on camels, huge mutant beasts about half again as big as Rock had remembered camels to be. They had three humps, creating a double row of seats up there between them. Rockson was thrown up top unceremoniously like a bag of potatoes, his hands tied behind his back. He was squeezed by the humps of a truly wretched-smelling animal, with his face pressed right into the hairy sand-gritted hide. Rahallah was thrown on the camel next to Rock’s. Sesostris was left there, lying stone-cold dead in the sand, his royal blood tinting the desert in a ring around his body, oozing slowly out in every direction.

“Thanks for trying, pal,” Rockson muttered down as his camel walked past the outstretched priest, somehow serene in his demise. That was all that you could ever do—try. Fate did the rest. Rahallah, too, uttered a few of his own witch-doctor prayers as he passed behind on the next camel in the convoy of eight. They rode for a good two hours, Killov in the lead, sitting up there with one of the red Qu’ul power sticks ready to lift up and smash anything that took his fancy. As the convoy made its way along the desert, Killov popped whole handfuls of pills into his thin lips, so pleased was he with his recent successes. And once he got a nice buzz on, and was feeling really mellow, he began using his Qu’ul, ripping up thorn trees, dunes, even animals running along the sands, and playing with them. He’d lift things up, then he would stop the power beam, suddenly making them drop from hundreds of feet up. A smile crossed his face each time the object of his affections smashed to the ground and was destroyed.

Rock’s stomach and chest were taking a pounding up on the camel’s back. It could move pretty good through the sand, but it wasn’t what you would call a smooth ride. It made the war elephants feel like they had Rolls-Royce suspension systems.

It took them three hours of solid riding to reach a whole series of small pyramids with an immense one that seemed to reach for the sky in the center: the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. Killov’s headquarters.

It was clearly the KGB lunatic’s homebase, for guards were everywhere, armed with conventional rifles and machine guns. Black-uniformed elite guards, each with one of the Qu’ul sticks, stood at each of the sides of the pyramid, in emplacements high up that had been carved out of the very side of the pyramid. Killov was not what you would call a strong believer in landmarks or preserving the past. Just rip down the Sphinx, renovate the pyramids. No problem! On the other hand, Rockson remembered, if his history was correct, that McDonald’s had—just before the Nuke War—set up a burger joint right inside Grant’s Tomb. The McGrant—if he remembered the name correctly from
the American Culture of the Past
book he had once read—was sold there.

But Rockson had more things to worry about than the lack of good hamburger joints in the late 2090’s. A huge slab of rock at the base of the pyramid opened, and the whole crew rode in on the camels. The doorway had been cut out a good twenty feet high. They didn’t mess around out here, Rockson had to give them that. But with those anti-grav sticks that Killov had managed to get his bloody hands on, you could think big. Remembering how much effort he and others had put into working on Century City’s tunnels, strengthening those that fell down, building new ones—a few devices like this would save the city incredible amounts of time and energy. It could mean almost a Renaissance for C.C.—more time for studies and meditation, rehabilitating some of the nearby wastelands. Time spent on developing things useful to man, not manhandling rocks.

Inside, the camels kneeled down, and Rock and Rahallah were each removed by several men from their respective mounts. They were carried down a tunnel with wall friezes of lions holding swords in all four paws and slicing off human heads, which were depicted falling to the earth in piles. Yeah, this must be the right place, Rockson mused sullenly as they were carried past the torches that were placed up on walls every fifty feet or so in ornate golden holders. The torches lit the procession with flickering bands of light and shadow.

They were carried into a religious assembly chamber with huge carvings of dogs and hawks, the place where Killov led the priests of Amun in their daily rituals, keeping firm control over them all. Two wide stone tables coated in purplish dried slime were in the center of the circular room, which was forty feet in diameter. An arched ceiling rose up some thirty feet above.

Rockson and Rahallah were carried to the slime-tables, and then tied down. Killov wouldn’t take the slightest chance with these two. He, above all men, knew the power of each one. He knew that it was incredible luck that he had been able to capture both of them. The dark gods were clearly winning in the battle with the gods of light. And his own dark plans were being favored at an accelerated pace.

Once the two were securely bound with steel wire to bronze ringlets embedded within the great sacrificial stones, Killov had his men cut the netting still encasing them apart with steel clippers.

They struggled violently once it was cut, testing the metal binds that held them down. But they were unbreakable.

“Yes, try to break it.” Killov chuckled as he stood at one end of Rockson’s slab. “It gives me such pleasure to see you struggling like this. Like animals caught in a trap. And soon I shall hear you scream as well. Music for my ears. In fact, I shall have the whole event recorded, video and audio, so I can have a permanent record of the torture and death of Ted Rockson and Premier Vassily’s black lackey. Ah, here it is now,” the KGB madman said as men brought video equipment in on their backs and set up two cameras with stereo mikes at each end of the two sacrificial altars. Within minutes the equipment was turned on, torches placed in stone holders around the room so it was lit up with a flaring brilliance.

“Now, Rockson,” Killov said, getting Rock’s attention. He had been looking around, trying to see if there was any way in hell to get free. The dozen priests, with gold vestments over their shoulders and long, dark red robes hanging to the hard floor, looked at him with infinite coldness and not a trace of mercy. “There’s nothing I want from you other than to see you die. No information, nothing. So there’s nothing you can do to stop me—no enticements. And all that will add to my pleasure. For you to know there’s no way out.” He hefted a glowing red Qu’ul in his hand, and pointed it at one of several slabs resting on their sides against one wall. The piece rose right up as light as a feather and started drifting across the room until it was hovering over Rockson.

Rock looked up and gulped. It was the exact size of the slab he was on, about six by ten feet. And looked to be about six feet thick. That meant when the bastard slammed it down on him, it would squash him into bug juice.

“I’m sure you’re thinking I’m going to crush you. But I’m not, I’m not.” Killov laughed, his drug-hazed eyes floating around in the narrow cavernous face like eggs in an overgreased frying pan. “Well, at least not right away. You know what amazes me most about these Qu’ul anti-gravity devices?” Killov went on. Rockson was unable to take his eyes away from the floating tons just six feet above him. “Their precision!”

“Courage, friend, courage,” Rahallah whispered over from his slab several yards away. “The gods will look highly upon you.” Even as he spoke, one of the Amun priests appeared at the end of his table, and using a second Qu’ul power-stick, lifted a piece of rock as big as, if not bigger than, Rockson’s. In a flash it was over Rahallah’s body, hanging there like a blimp ready to run out of gas.

“Yes, I’m sure the gods will welcome you, won’t they?” Killov laughed sharply like a hysterical woman. “And they’ll have you soon. But not so easily—or in one piece. As I was saying, Rockson, what amazes me most about these Qu’ul is the precision with which one can operate them once you become adept. As I have. They’re like scalpels. They can be focused in so many ways. For example, although that is at least ten tons of rock above you, I can lower it at a very slow speed.” He started bringing it down but fractions of an inch at a time.

“Or,” Killov suddenly spat out with a shrill madness, “I can move it fast.” Suddenly the slab was dropping right on him, coming down like a meteor from hell. It loomed huge within hundredths of a second, and Rock’s eyes snapped shut involuntarily, not wanting to see the end. But then another second passed, and another. And Rock knew there was no way in hell it would take more than two seconds for that slab to fall the last inch onto his flesh. He snapped his eyes open, and was looking up at the slab, micrometers from his nose.

“And then you can stop it again, anywhere. Isn’t it amazing?” Killov exclaimed. “I’m going to crush you, Rockson, slowly. Very slowly. You will feel every bone in your body snap, shall feel the very cells of your flesh exploded before I am done with you. Feel your eyeballs pop from your head like rotten fruits.” Killov turned his hand just slightly, the red beam cloaking the entire slab with a crackling, almost invisible sheen of red electricity starting to move again.

Rock could feel it coming down agonizingly slowly. He turned his head sideways, and had to pull in his chest. He winced. It hurt already as it squashed his ear against the side of his skull. And then the skull began compressing slightly as the death slab dropped down another twentieth of an inch in a minute.