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

haul it.
    Rockson watched the red sun climb over the jagged peaks.
    It took all day to go just sixty miles. They were on the slope of a grassy hill now, entering a pass Rockson carefully scanned with his electron binoculars. No problems ahead. He scanned back along the path they’d taken and sighed in relief. There were no pursuers. The ruse was evidently still working. It had damned well better work: Rock didn’t want to shoot at any fellow Americans sent to stop him. But now it was too late for anyone to catch up to Rock and his men. He sure hoped to hell that Schecter could actually flee the city, hide out somewhere after all this. A man could get shot for what he’d done, especially during martial law. Stealing nuclear material carried a death sentence.
    Overhead the sun was playing tag with several black clouds over a whitefaced mountain. Rock said, “Time to switch off the chariot horses. There’s level ground ahead. Give the big brutes a break.”
    That done, they went on down the long, long pass. The short winter day passed quickly. They continued the trek even after dark. The ’brids had excellent night vision, and the men wore night-radar goggles.
    The temperature dropped to a bitterness uncommon even for midwinter: minus thirty degrees Celsius. That, plus the purple strontium waves flickering in the sky above a red sickle moon, did much to lend a certain gloom and uncertainty to Rock’s mood. He called a halt to the march at midnight, in order for everyone to get six hours’ sleep. Of course, he posted a watch. There were bad things out here . . .
    Archer fell asleep on his watch, Rockson was aghast to discover in the dawn’s light. Rock shook the mountain man awake angrily, and Archer nearly wept for his dereliction of duty.
    “It’s okay,” Rockson said as Archer apologized, “I know you sleep with one eye open.”
    “I do! I do!” the yawning man insisted.
    Rockson walked with Archer to the campfire.
    As they ate some of the creeper-vine stew and drank coffee, McCaughlin scrambled some quail eggs he’d found nearby. It smelled great. Eaten with heavy butter on wheat bread, the dish proved that McCaughlin was undoubtedly the best trail cook in the world. The good coffee was his own special blend—with a tinge of snake powder in it, the cook said, for flavor. It had more than a caffeine kick. It jolted one awake.
    Rock opened the folders and read as he drank the brew. What he read he didn’t like.
    “What is it?” Chen asked, noting Rockson’s expression of dismay.
    “The MILIS area is controlled by a sort of band of—er—crazed women warriors,” Rock said, looking up at Chen.
    “Shit! How many? Are they well armed?”
    “Intel says there’s only a few dozen of them. They call themselves the ‘Millies’, and they have primitive arms. But you know what these feminist groups are like . . . mad Amazons!”
    “Yeah,” Chen said, thinking about the Barbaras—wild women who use men for procreation and then kill them.
    The roving bands of women warriors in this forsaken desert area were the black widows of the human race.
    Archer came to peer over Rock’s shoulder at the info-packet. Rock let him look. They should all know what they were up against. Archer flipped through the pictures of the MILIS rocket, and the diagrams of the hangar area. Then he saw the intel pics of the Millies. He mumbled out the words as he laboriously read the report, then put it down. He shouted, “Wooomens! Sex! We have sex! They look pretty! They let us have rocket?” The simple-minded Archer looked very innocent.
    “Maybe it will be that easy, Archer,” Rock said. He patted the mountain man on the back. “Well, let’s all get mounted and get going. Be sure to keep checking radiation levels.”
    Archer sang for the next half hour of the ride, one joyous simple song: “Sex! Sex! Good-old-sex!” he repeated and repeated.
    Eventually their mood got lighter, even frivolous. The morning air warmed to spring