Free Doomsday Warrior 19 - America’s Final Defense by Ryder Stacy

flabby and pudgy for a trek, but they were young; they’d make it. The trip would toughen ’em up. Best thing for a man is to get away from soft, easy living, Rock thought.
    “Where’s Schecter?” Chen asked. “And where’s the ’brids?”
    The Chinese man’s face looked purple in the emergency arc-lights set above the blast doors.
    “Here I am,” someone said. A door opened, and there was Schecter, plus several “grunts”—heavy-set men from the nuclear power plant They were wearing orange patches on their coverall pockets, the three-propeller “Nuclear Power Facility” emblem. Between them the grunts rolled a heavy-tired cart that was of the strangest design Rockson had ever seen. It actually had sharp blades on its wheelspokes. “God, is that—”
    “Yes, Rock,” Schecter beamed, “it’s an ancient Roman chariot. I’ve borrowed it from the museum, and specially reinforced it, of course, with titanium alloy. Now it’s stronger than steel. Guaranteed for three or four thousand runs around the coliseum, or for the trek to the rocketship. Sorry Rock; no airplane.”
    “What’s inside it?” Rock went around to see, and he whistled when he observed the radiation sign on the box inside the chariot. The ancient cart held a single black box that was obviously heavy as hell, from the way the chariot creaked as they pushed it along.
    “Easy,” Schecter said, “bring it to a slow rest.” Schecter played a geiger counter over the surface of the box. “Good. It’s not leaking.”
    “Is that . . .” Rock began to ask, taking an unconscious step back.
    “Yes, it’s the nuclear core we stole from the power plant. I placed a bunch of my new detonation fuses on it. It’s set to cause an implosion when you punch in the code.”
    “Boom?” Archer asked.
    “Big boom,” Rock acknowledged. “It’s a nuclear bomb.”
    “How we gonna get that pulled by our horses? By the way, where are the horses?” McCaughlin asked.
    Schecter looked around, dismayed. “Oh, no . . . C.J. should have had the ’brids here by now. I hope to God that—”
    The sounds of measured hoofbeats cut him off. They spun around. Coming down the ramp from the direction of the main stairwell was a gaggle of ’brids.
    “C.J.!” Rock exclaimed, “you got us the ’brids!”
    “Yeah,” the skinny, pock-faced man came forward to say. “And these babies are real bright. I managed to get them up the stairs when we couldn’t use the lifts from the stable facility. You should have told me you were going to knock out the power in the city to cause a diversion, I should have had the ’brids bridled and saddled earlier.” Then C.J. looked over at the chariot, and the black box, and at the nuke power plant grunts, and Schecter. C.J. paled, “You didn’t, did you?”
    “I did,” Schecter admitted. “As they say, ‘in for a penny, in for a dollar.’ You don’t know about this, C.J. You didn’t see the box—right?”
    “That’s right,” he gulped. “Deaf, dumb, and blind.”
    “Now,” Rock said, “how do we move this heavy—er—device—to the rocket. What does it weigh? How many ’brids will it take to pull it?”
    “All told,” Schecter said, pulling out a calculator and making computations, “a thousand pounds. Look, this chariot is strong, and bulletproof. Plus there’s a double hitch, for two of the big pack-’brids to be hitched up to the chariot. They should be able to pull it along, I hope. I’ve calculated the strength of the pack-’brids, and multiplied by—”
    C.J. pulled two of the heaviest, meanest looking ’brids forward from the pack. The brown-speckled one farted, and it smelled worse than Archer’s best shot. “Whew! If the damned thing’s muscles are as powerful as its farts,” Detroit said, “it can haul anything.”
    “Yeah,” C.J. said, “it is. Both of ’em are strong as hell. Just give them these pellets of superfood every day, just before bedtime. They’ll be fine. You can