Doomsday Warrior 03 - The Last American Read Free

Blood Spider squarely in the meatiest part of its grotesque body. The shriveled, batlike face was shattered instantaneously into spider meat. The thing stopped dead in its tracks, looking somewhat confused, its eye dangling from long veiny threads halfway out of the sockets. Then the twelve legs gave out as if the air was being let out of them, and the nearly quarter-ton of mutation fell to the damp cave floor with a loud, slurping thud.
    Rockson heard screams everywhere around him. The other members of the expedition weren’t doing quite as well. Most of them were not fighters but technicians who had been brought along so as to be able to recognize and bring back the choicest bits of twentieth-century machine parts that were found. They were experts in reconditioning the past engines of the world, in making elaborate weapons and medical devices from nothing more than a few springs, an old battery, and some wire—but they weren’t fighters. Half of them had never been out of Century City for more than hours at a time in their entire lives. Only Rockson and Detroit, the squat black cannonball of a man who accompanied Rockson on nearly all his missions, were combat men.
    The Doomsday Warrior wished he had his Liberator automatic rifle, but it was strapped to his hybrid horse nearly an hour away, tethered at the mouth of the deep cavern. His shotgun pistol and mutant reflexes would have to do. Several of the scientific party were already dead. Blood Spiders stood contentedly slurping down the bloody pieces of what had been men—a head in one’s mouth, a head and shoulder in another’s. Rockson let loose a blast directly into the jaws of each of the sucking creatures. They jerked violently away from their meals and went into a frenzied dance of death. Across the nearly hundred-yard-wide cavern, lit only with the barest of an amber glow emanating from the rock itself that surrounded them, Detroit Green was giving some Blood Spiders a run for their money. Detroit was always armed with twin bandoliers of hand grenades wrapped around his broad chest, and now he was pulling off two at a time, holding them and heaving them at his attackers at the last possible second. Again and again he blasted the spiders back to the nightmarish hell that had created them in the first place. At least Rock didn’t have to worry about one man. More shots!
    He turned to the right as he heard a heart-stopping scream. Pierce, the archeologist, was nearly covered by one of the flesh-eating monstrosities, his arm disappearing inside the meat-grinding jaws. A foul-smelling brown saliva mix true of the guts and blood of the already dead men and spiders created a vomitous odor. Rock ran over to the man, unnoticed by the spider, which was chewing the meat off the bone of Pierce’s arm. The Doomsday Warrior pushed the muzzle of the shotgun pistol right up into the thing’s jaw and pulled the trigger. The creature lifted nearly a foot in the air, like a marionette yanked suddenly by its operator, and released the half-chewed arm of the scientist. Rock pulled the man away and leaned him up against an outcropping of stone. The poor bastard was already going into shock. Rock knew the symptoms well—white face, trembling lips, eyes staring off into infinity as if preparing to meet their maker. The arm was badly mangled, bits of white bone and tendon hanging out like a rag doll chewed up by the family dog. But there was nothing he could do right now. There wasn’t time to tend to the wounded, he didn’t know, if they were going to get out at all. He reloaded the seven-shot pistol in seconds, slamming shells from the ammo belt into place. Then he dove back into the thick of it.
    The Blood Spiders were still descending from above. How many of the goddamned things could there be? They were so large, Rockson thought, it didn’t seem possible that that many could live up on the roof of the foul cave. He quickly scanned the hanging threads that dangled and shook