Doomsday Warrior 19 - America’s Final Defense Read Online Free PDF Page A

taste worse than that hundred-year-old pack of Pall Malls I found in the archaeology dig up at Benkill,” he complained. “And these torture devices on my back! Do you work for the KGB?”
    “Nursey knows what’s best.”
    He stared soulfully into her eyes and she nearly came in her pink panties.

    The therapy continued for most of the early morning. Rockson was treated to salt and mineral baths, shocked by small doses of electricity on his earlobes, burned by moksha puncture sticks, needled with a hundred carefully placed acupuncture needles. “I’m not a goddamned pin cushion,” he complained at last. But whenever he got too upset, she let him have a long look down her cleavage—by accident, of course. Her short white skirt would ride up sometimes, too. And when she bent over, those pink panties made him forget his discomfort.
    The therapy worked rapidly, and Rockson sat up now. She allowed him a few sips of ginseng-laced broth.
    Schecter returned to the hospital at 10 A.M. , quickly stuck his ice-cold stethoscope on Rock’s massive chest, and said, “Well, I don’t know how you do it, but you’re back to normal health. Normal for a mutant, that is. Now put on your clothes, Rock, and get the hell outta here, before that sexy nurse I shoved into the other room seduces you into exhaustion. By the way, the council has—”
    “I know,” Rock frowned, “they have a job for me.”
    Schecter nodded. “Democracy is a real hard taskmaster, Rockson, my boy.”
    Rock slipped into his blue workshirt, buttoning it wrong. Then he pulled his olive fatigue pants off a hook and jumped into them. “What is it the council wants?” he asked. “Has another of our free cities gone fascist? Somebody stub their toe in Utah?”
    “Lots worse than that, Rock,” Schecter replied grimly. “The council instructs me that they wish urgently to see you in their main chamber in . . .” he looked at his watch “. . . one hour and five minutes. Be there. Go shave and clean up, but that’s all! Don’t be late.”
    “Want to know a funny thing?” said Rock, rubbing his stubbled chin. “I usually don’t have to shave—my mutant genes must have been altered by those weird treatments Charity had been giving me.”
    “Yes, hair growth is a harmless side effect. Chen assures me that the Tibetan drugs promote hair growth on the chin, but that’s the only side effect. Maybe I should try some of that stuff on my thinning scalp. No—I’d better not, could be dangerous.”
    “Dangerous?” Rock moaned. “You and Chen and Nurse Ratched out there were sure anxious to try out those weird drugs on me, but you won’t take it yourself! Thanks a lot!”
    Schecter laughed, “No, no, Rock—it’s all perfectly safe. I mean, it might be dangerous for me to change my looks. People respect this balding head of mine. All the drugs you took were made of natural ingredients. Some of those pills you took were made of herbs gathered in Mongolia, 12,000 feet up the side of a mountain. Those Mongolian mosses have different effects on different people, of course. There have been reports that they—er—can act as a sort of aphrodisiac.”
    Rock snorted. “Likely story. I’ve been an unwilling guinea pig, and now you’re sorry.” He gave the old man a tap on the arm. “Get yourself another experimental subject.”
    Rock avoided going through the anteroom of the clinic in order to avoid Charity, on the way out. The nurse had pressed the key to her room into his hand just before Schecter had come in. He’d see her later.
    But he did not avoid another female. He was grabbed, and squeezed so hard that his ribs hurt. “Rona, ease off,” he complained. “I’m sore all over.”
    “But you’re alive,” the beaming redhead replied. “Is everything okay? You didn’t lose—any parts?”
    “I’m all there, but it needs a workout.” Rockson scooped Rona up into his arms and walked down the corridor with her toward the elevator leading to