Free Doomsday Warrior 09 - America’s Zero Hour by Ryder Stacy

outside of Blackfoot—Scheransky put up a fuss about the necessity of keeping Vassily informed by radio of their progress.
    “Forget it,” Rock said. The team had a shortwave radio that they could reach Century City with in case of emergency—in case the missiles were found—but he sure as hell didn’t want to use it. “We’ll contact Vassily after we achieve our objective. He’ll get no goddamned progress reports.”
    At last they reached the grass and cracks of Route I-15, just fifty miles from the base from which the missiles had been stolen.
    Scheransky, grumbling, set up the tracking device and in a matter of minutes it began beeping. “If we just follow the road . . . he’s probably taken it straight into Canada,” Scheransky said. “See? The tracker turned once, then points down the road.”
    “How old is the trace?” Rock asked. “Can you tell?”
    “Sure—he was here, oh, a week ago—seven or eight days . . .”
    They found deep tracks in the mud-splattered highway—huge convoy trucks with twenty-four-inch tires carrying their loads of death north. “No need for further readings for a while, Major.”
    “Let’s follow the footprints,” Rock said, staying his ’brid. “They always lead to the beast that made them.”
    The moon swept up into the deep purple sky after sundown. Its gibbous elegance lit the rolling road before them with waves of white. On this night it looked so cold, so untouchable against the radioactive glowing atmosphere of the earth, striated with endlessly orbiting webs of pink and green strontium clouds.
    High atop his ’brid, Ted Rockson surveyed the scene with his piercing mismatched eyes. Behind, the rest of the expeditionary attack force rode in silence. Magnificent, Rock thought to himself, gazing up at the perfect symmetry of the moon and stars, the violet clouds that floated over it all. For a moment it created a vision of ultimate beauty, a Japanese print spread out across the cold heavens. Beautiful, but . . . Those heavens, those clouds, were filled with radioactive elements, atoms whose superhot nuclei would produce death rays for thousands of years.
    As he shifted in his saddle, Rockson patted his big mutant horse on the neck. It seemed a little skittish tonight. It knew—all the ’brids sensed when they were going out on a mission. Sometimes when his faint ESP powers were particularly keen, Rockson could read the thoughts of the big steeds—their strength, their simple needs, their devotion to man.
    The faces of Kim and Rona kept interfering with the stars above him. Their faces covered with blood, their shrieking as the Red missiles dug deep into Century City’s tunnels and exploded, melting flesh, memory, flashed in his mind. The fearsome image kept burning in his head. He gritted his teeth together, gazed past the strontium clouds, beyond the bands of pink and green, writhing like luminescent gargoyles far above, gazed on past the moon, beyond the stars. He searched and probed with all his heart for a God that he wasn’t even sure existed, and pleaded with him to spare Century City.
    Keeping a slow, even gait, they rode on through the cool night, letting the ’brids set the pace. They’d have to go slowly—the road was now bumpy, pitted, but Rock didn’t want to be behind schedule when the sun came up.
    In the morning, the tired riders saw the big wheel-tracks veer off the road and continue overland. Heading straight north.
    At last they hit the Great North Prairie, and the ’brids were able to pick up speed through the frost-tinged fields of sunflowers, dandelions, and clover. Edging his smaller ’brid near Rock, Detroit came up to the lead. He smiled, as if to say, It’s great to be on a mission with you. The bull-necked man had accompanied Rockson on many missions—each more dangerous than the one before. But they had always made it through, usually against the kind of odds a local high-school team would have had against the Chicago