Doomsday Warrior 13 - American Paradise by Ryder Stacy Read Free Book Online Page A

down its flat surface.
    “I bet,” said Detroit eagerly, “that well find some ammo here to replace the stuff lost in the storm.”
    Rock had the men split up, cautioning, “Report back here in an hour.”
    “If I see ghost—I yell,” said the mountain man.
    Rockson was the first back. He had some good finds: a sextant and charts. One by one, each member of the exploring team returned with his own pile of goodies. Detroit had found some pistols—well oiled. “They were sunk in grease, we can just shine ’em up. They’ll be good as new.”
    “I find ammo,” Archer said proudly as he came out of the gloom.
    Archer set down two heavy, black metal satchels. Rockson pried one open and exclaimed, “Plastique!— Good man, Archer. We’ll blow the Muscle Beach free of the weeds.”
    Murf returned looking shaken to his bones. “I found wet footprints! A dozen—or more. Bare feet! It must be the pirate ghosts from the Flying Dutchman!”
    “No,” the Doomsday Warrior said. “Whoever the hell they are, they are flesh and blood humans and—” Rockson froze in mid-sentence, for out of the corner of his eye he had seen one of the sacks of pistols that Detroit had gathered slither away, pulled by an unseen hand. The sack rounded a corner and disappeared.
    “There is somebody here,” Rock whispered. He rushed to the corner and caught a fleeting glimpse of something fast moving and grey darting down the deck toward the rusting planes.
    “What did you see?” Murf asked, coming alongside Rock.
    “Looked like a dwarf!” Rock took out his balisong knife and pursued, the others following. When they reached the rusting jets, they saw lots of small skeletons scattered about.
    “Kids?” asked Detroit.
    “Maybe . . .” Then Rockson saw them: stunted, twisted little men in tattered sailor’s outfits. One was limping away with the bags of pistols he had reclaimed, whimpering in fear.
    A dozen other miniature beings skittered out from holes in the planes, snarling like trapped rats. One of the super-fast creatures caught its foot in a collapsed piece of rusting airplane and jerked to a halt. Now they got a chance to see what one looked like.
    It was a pathetic creature, human but full of sores and spotted with tufts of grey hair. Its nose was big and sniffing, the nostrils flaring; its eyes were tiny cataract-filled things.
    “It’s nearly blind,” Detroit said.
    His voice caused a panic in the creature, which jerked on its leg and, snarling and yipping in fear and anger, tore free and ran for it.
    “My God—mutant humans!” Murf said.
    Detroit raised his guns to bring him down.
    “No,” said Rock, “don’t shoot. I think these sad creatures are fellow Americans!”
    “What?” Detroit gasped. “Those little ratlike things?”
    “I found out the name of this carrier,” Rock said. “It is an American ship. This is the U.S.S. Nimitz; these sailors are Americans —forth or fifth generation living in this Sargasso-like sea—they just probably want to be left alone. They could have shot at us, you know. And they didn’t.”
    Detroit put his weapons down, stunned. “The radiation did it, I suppose.”
    Rockson wanted to get back to the Muscle Beach by dark. They had materials to patch her hull, and charts, explosives and other items they needed. Time to move on.

Six
    A t dawn, they made good use of the explosives Archer had found. Rock had them set the plastique at intervals all around the ship. When they were detonated and broke up the tangle of seaweed, the repaired sail was raised, and they tacked slowly out of the seaweed sea. It took several sets of explosions to completely free the ship.
    In sunny weather, they headed on—not toward the fresh water island—for they had found that the tubular seaweed they exploded contained ample fresh water, which they drained into barrels. Instead, they limped toward Rarapani once more. As they sailed away from the seaweed, Rockson resumed his solitary night watch on