Doomsday Warrior 10 - American Nightmare Read Online Free PDF Page A

. . It seemed as if the Furies themselves ran wild across the range. A double-whammy of dynamic forces converged into a combined implosion-explosion. Rock looked back to kiss his ass good-bye as he was pulled up from his hiding place into the wild blue yonder.
    Once engulfed within the pressurized magnetic field of the storm, Rock shed the puny force of gravity and encroached on another dimension. He felt himself spinning through space, yawing and tumbling, protected from collisions with other objects by a strong magnetic field that charged everything within the storm’s eye, causing objects to repel each other. He was like a planet in deep space, unable to breath yet not needing air to live. All perceptions were twisted but he could sense objects floating alongside him, seemingly motionless but actually hurling with him at breakneck speeds in their own upward orbit. Images appeared like phantoms in his midst: parts of buildings, vehicles, people, horses, phasing in and out of his consciousness in a parade of surrealism. The bubble of silence burst with a cavernous roar, a sonic boom, the force undulating in waves through Rock’s body.
    He seemed to fall forever. He fell for so long that he began laughing and lashing about at the darkness all around him, not knowing whether he was dead or alive, falling to earth or to the bowels of hell.
    When he finally stopped falling it was not with a bang but with a whimper. He landed on his feet, almost as if he’d jumped off a low roof, and his momentum carried him forward in a run. As he braked himself, the darkness ebbed, the terrible pressure lifted, and his eyes adjusted to the bright sun burning high in the midday sky. His ears popped.
    But when he looked around him, instead of the desolate sandy plain and rocky buttes he expected, he found himself in the middle of a thriving metropolis. He had barely arrested his forward motion when an automobile screeched by him only inches away, the driver leaning on the horn and cursing out the window. It was a red Toyota.
    “Out of the road, you tramp!” he bellowed.
    Rock, exhausted, drenched in a cold sweat, his shredded sealskin garb dangling from his tortured body in shreds, darted from the midst of the roadway he found himself on, while an endless stream of strange automobiles and trucks whizzed past, horns blaring, people scowling, the midday sun baking the asphalt tarmac. Where the hell was he?
    He stood on a high bridge, the uppermost overpass of an elaborate cloverleaf intersection at the fringe of the great desert city. To his far right, a wide lake stretched to the horizon, the city crowding along its shores, crowned by an immense tower in its center. To the left, the desert opened as far as the eye could see.
    Parched with thirst, his mind racing for coordinates, he began stumbling along the thin sidewalk leading past the rows of traffic to the ground. Rock struggled onward for half a mile before reaching a stranger who stood fuming over his overheated engine, tie loosened, sweat pouring from his pudgy face. Behind him a chorus of drivers cursed him for “blocking the lane.”
    “Got to hell . . .” he screamed to a greasy dude driving a racy yellow convertible. An Oldsmobile! Another antique vechicle!
    Rockson stumbled up to the man as he slammed the hood down on his steaming engine.
    “What . . . where . . . who?” Rockson mumbled.
    The man looked up at the strange figure. “Huh? Oh, listen, pal, I got troubles of my own today . . . Gimme a break and keep moving. You know the slogan, ‘Don’t Feed the Homeless!’ ”
    “But . . . but . . .” Rockson gasped, gawking at the man’s strange clothing and pointing around in a stupor.
    “All right, all right, here . . .” said the stranger, shoving a U.S. one-dollar bill into Rock’s hand and turning away. “Now beat it before you get picked up. I’ve got my own troubles. I got six buyers waiting for sixteen thousand feet of four-inch plastic pipe while I’m stuck