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DOOMSDAY WARRIOR: American Glory!


MinDonner

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Sorry for the delay on this update. I was half-arsedly planning to illustrate the next section with Lego (I has a Lego octopus which is woefully underused), but kept getting stymied by rainy weekends, my camera battery immediately running flat, the frequent collapses of my crappy cardboard Fort Svetlanya model, and of course my lack of any figures that look anything like either commies or Freefighters (it would have been pirates v skeletons in the end, possibly including vikings as the Aussie contingent)... so, you'll just have to imagine that part for yourselves.

Anyways, Fort Svetlanya's guard captain strides along the ramparts self-importantly, checking off security provisions on a clipboard. Even though they hadn't been attacked in fifty years, security was still of paramount importance! His chest is bedecked with many ribbons that he has somehow gained in all these years of never being attacked; I imagine this complacency is also what allows him to strut around in his dress uniform while on duty. But, there's nothing to see out there except flocks of bats with their "sonic radar". Yep, looks like the whole "dead guards and exploding fence" thing has been forgotten about already.

Suddenly he sees... mysterious shapes emerging from the darkness!

He reached over and grabbed the binoculars from the neck of a subordinate officer, ripping the strap in half, and quickly focused on the mountainous shadows. Only they weren't shadows he saw, as the blood drained from his face. They were... they were...

Man the cannons! Fire at will! The guards struggle to comply. Apparently the "radioactive rays coming from the ground" had buggered up all their technology so everything had to be done by hand.

But when they pushed the autofocus on their sighting systems, and saw the monstrosities, the spit dried up in their mouths and their hearts slammed into their chests as if trying to escape - like rats from a ship.

Try not to think too hard about that last metaphor. It's clear the author didn't. :shocked:

All the cannons fire, boom, explosions, smoke, etc... but the octopuses are still coming! The captain takes it all very personally.

The long, suckered tentacles reached towards his glasses like arms from the grave and he felt a series of shivers ripple up and down his spine. It was death - death incarnate - and it was stalking him.

A paragraph later and the beasts are upon the fortress, then we get a full page of description as captain is scooped up by a tentacle and devoured. A sample:

The Captain of the Guard tried to scream again as he saw the gnashing rows of endless teeth, curved and long and glistening with dark brown digestive fluids. But he couldn't. His body was in such terror that neither his lips nor his tongue could move. The tentacle raised up and the teeth moved suddenly at super speed, like a sewing machine. The captain's legs were the first in and he felt them ground up instantly into a bloody hamburger. Then his stomach and chest were pulled into the thousand-toothed mouth of the mutation, and he was turned into Homo Sapiens paté in a hundredth of a second.

(this goes on for a while longer)

Anyway, the octopuses tear down the fortress walls, the Aussies make sure they keep them away from the prison building, and soon all the commies have been eaten. Time to rescue some prisoners! Detroit easily blows up the guards with his grenades and baseball-pitching skillz, and they're in.

Most of the prisoners have been so broken by torture that they don't understand the concept of freedom, so the ever-compassionate Rock fires his pistol into the ceiling "to frighten them off"; they head downstairs, "dumb as cows". But no time for that! Where is Kim??

Eventually Rock finds a cowering official and extracts the information he needs. Kim and Langford have been taken to Washington! No more sense hanging around here then.

Outside, the freed prisoners mill around helplessly. Rock knows that most of them will be dead within weeks cos they have no idea how to fend for themselves. But that's the law of Darwin! Tough shit, prisoners! Rock has a girlfriend to rescue and that's far more important! And he rides off into the night.

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Funnily enough, Stacy makes a big production out of the fact that El Capitane stays conscious throughout the whole process. Oh noes!

I think it's worth taking a further look at Rock's treatment of the prisoners, also. From what we've seen, America is largely depopulated, with Commies rounding up all stray wanderers, and cannibals, monsters and acid rain taking care of the rest. The exceptions are the Freefighters in their luxurious underground cities, from whence only about 6 guys ever venture outside, except on occasions where it's necessary to get slaughtered by overwhelming numbers of Nazis. You'd think that, in the circumstances, it might be a better idea to escort the former prisoners back to CC, feed em up and train them to help out with the resistance? But noooo, instead we get the macho posturing of "only the strongest shall survive! Sucks to be you!". No wonder it's taken them a hundred years to defeat the most inept occupying force in history.

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That's because TRUE FREEDOM requires sacrifice. TRUE FREEDOM is about the quality of the free not the gross quantity. This is why unlike our American cousins we Eurocommies shall never be truly free :crying: .

Well not until we can learn to let ravenous mutant octupusseseses eat up any of our fellow citizens who weren't killed by the acid rain anyway.

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So in case you are ever in an emergency and need to herd giant octopi:

Boomerangs - irritate giant octopi and can be used to herd them in the proper direction.

Machine guns, artillery, rifles - anger the beasts, but do not slow them. Not to be used for herding.

I'm impressed that the boomerangs can still be used for herding (away from the prison) even when the octopoids are enraged. Those Aussies are the bees knees, shepherding-wise.

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That's because TRUE FREEDOM requires sacrifice. TRUE FREEDOM is about the quality of the free not the gross quantity. This is why unlike our American cousins we Eurocommies shall never be truly free :crying: .

Well not until we can learn to let ravenous mutant octupusseseses eat up any of our fellow citizens who weren't killed by the acid rain anyway.

Weakness needs to be excised. It is known.

So in case you are ever in an emergency and need to herd giant octopi:

Boomerangs - irritate giant octopi and can be used to herd them in the proper direction.

Machine guns, artillery, rifles - anger the beasts, but do not slow them. Not to be used for herding.

I'm impressed that the boomerangs can still be used for herding (away from the prison) even when the octopoids are enraged. Those Aussies are the bees knees, shepherding-wise.

Sometimes I wonder if Stacy is not just laughing his ass off when "writing" about Rockson. Sometimes I'm sure he's fooling everyone. And then I read, through Min, the relish with which he flays people alive and employs his nether universe poles (not the country), and then I know: he's serious. (Which makes it a bit hard to believe that sales were high enough to justify some twenty odd Doomdsday books.)

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And yet they weren't just ebooks knocked off by some teenager or some miserable man falsely imprisoned for life in a high walled penitentary with only a computer, a dot-matrix printer and his dwindling memories of the outside world to spur his creativity and earn a few pennies to buy lunchtime treats. They were properly published books with covers and everything.

So presumably they must have sold.

Truly wonders never cease. And certainly not once Ryder and Stacey got to work.

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"The Night of Blood will begin," Colonel Killov said.

Uh oh. But luckily Chapter Thirteen is extremely short, only 3 pages. One of which is taken up almost entirely by telling us that Killov is thin, and takes a lot of drugs. You know, in case we'd forgotten.

He is standing in front of a huge map of America, on which one hundred blue dots are rapidly advancing towards one hundred red dots, representing his KGB surprise attack on the Red Army outposts. Either he has some super-awesome GPS facility that somehow survived Rock's attack on the Moscow control centre, or else these locations are being transmitted by telegram and frantically updated by sweaty minions in the next room.

Screens and monitors flash and beep as he wanders around, showing one Red fortress after another falling beneath the KGB assault, which seems some bizarre conflation of fifth-columnist infiltration and outright attack. Apparently as soon as the top general in each base was taken out, all the other soldiers just obeyed whoever was now in charge, regardless of whether he'd been shooting at them just minutes earlier, because to disobey a senior officer meant torture - or worse! Which is, er, why Colonel Killov gets comments like this:

"Your name shall go down in history, sir," General Strinyin said, saluting him. "Never has such a small force taken over such a large one in such a short time. Not in the entire military history of the planet. Excellency, you are the greatest military mind ever."

This compliment makes Killov almost faint from excitement, and as nearly all the red dots have turned blue, it's time to take some more drugs and have a lie down. Thus ends the Night of Blood, the least thrilling military coup in the entire history of the planet.

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Screens and monitors flash and beep as he wanders around, showing one Red fortress after another falling beneath the KGB assault, which seems some bizarre conflation of fifth-columnist infiltration and outright attack. Apparently as soon as the top general in each base was taken out, all the other soldiers just obeyed whoever was now in charge, regardless of whether he'd been shooting at them just minutes earlier, because to disobey a senior officer meant torture - or worse!

Ah, Stacy's eminently sensible grasp of strategy. Always something beyond your expectations.

Truly wonders never cease. And certainly not once Ryder and Stacey got to work.

Amen. Can you imagine a "brainstormingsession" between these guys?

"We need some kind of horrible living death to breath-kill Soviets!"

"...Well... How about giant octopussies that live on land?"

"Cool, and we can have naked tigerwomen herd them with their tits!"

"Or Australians with boomerangs! We've already done tigerlady tits."

"Have we? Oh yeah, in Wyoming right? We'll save Rona and Kim for tit-duty then."

Or something even worse.

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Chapter Fourteen and Rock is kicking himself for the rather egregious error of smashing up an entire fortress to rescue his girlfriend the president who wasn't even there. And now he doesn't know what to do! Obviously none of the sidekicks have any ideas, so they ride southeast for two days while Rock tries to make up his mind. At this point they reach the rustic Freefighting village of Jeffersonville, where the Aussies (unlike the readers) are surprised to see Rock treated as a national hero.

They are served home-made beer, home-baked bread and rare venison, apparently without any cutlery, as Rock is described as tearing the meat from a leg-bone with his teeth. Perhaps Ryder Stacy thinks that venison is a type of chicken or something? Or maybe a mutant deer with small legs. Wallace, the head of Jeffersonville, strokes his long white beard and tells our heroes all about the Night of Blood, which they had apparently heard about via carrier pigeon.

Rock: Oh noes! This is all my fault! If I hadn't blown up Vassily's nuke control center, Killov would have been too afraid of nukes to do this!

Wallace: (strokes beard) Nonsense, actually Killov would have done it anyway, and then Vassily would have nuked us, so YOU SAVED US ALL ROCKSON

Rock: Phew! But now we have to rescue Kim The President from Killov who is even worse than Zhabnov! *BELLOWS WITH RAGE*

Luckily, Wallace has a plan. They need to take the Silver Bullet Express! Apparently, this used to be a special train service which ran from DC to Salt Lake City via Chicago, which seems a rather peculiar and truncated route (SLC the terminus? Really?), and has now only just been rebuilt by the Russians who obviously managed to do so while engaged in massive Nazi-aided warfare in exactly the same area as the route, without any of the CC folk noticing. And the Nebraska station is just south of Jeffersonville!

Not only this, but Wallace has managed to steal a timetable (:rofl:) and the next train is due in just two days. I'll repeat that. Wallace has managed to steal a train timetable. I'm now just picturing Mon Mothma saying "...and many brave Bothans died to bring us this souvenir brochure with fold-out tour map".

Anyway, Wallace provides a guide to escort them to the elusive Nebraska Central Station, and then they take 6 hours for a rest, as they have a train to hijack and will need all their strength!

The guide's name is Floating Hawk. Yes, it's time for some more stereotyping! Floating Hawk talks in monosyllables and in the manner of Spartacus dialogue. "When something to say - talk," he says gruffly. "Indians always in bad mood." But then he admits that Rock is the awesomest warrior ever so they get on fine after that. So time for a Crying Indian commercial!

Everything Rock had read about Indians of the past was true. They were the native Americans. Their relationship to the land and the creatures on it was like that of brothers, of a people that had lived harmoniously with the land for eons without harming it. It took the white man to do that, the Doomsday Warrior thought bitterly, blah blah etc etc

Yep, full cliché quota achieved, time for Floating Hawk (the last of his tribe!) to vanish from the narrative forever, as Nebraska Central Station draws into view.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Should probably finish off this chapter then. After Floating Hawk rides off, there's half a page of camel-comedy as Boyd's camel keeps trying to bite Snorter's tail, then gobs in Boyd's face. LOL!

Now Rock, Master of Disguise, is at it again. But not content with just a blanket this time, oh no!

He rolled around in a patch of wet grass for a minute, getting green coloration on his khaki uniform, and then tied a small leafy branch over his face and head. He knew he looked ridiculous - but he wasn't entering a beauty contest. Hopefully, the crude camouflage would work.

Rock wriggles on his stomach towards Nebraska Station, knife in hand - if any killing is to be done, it must be silent, else ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE. The station (complete with ticket window) is full of high-ranking Russian officers, all slapping leather gloves in their hands in proper enemy-officer fashion, and waiting for the train to turn up so they can escape from Killov or something. But in any case, this rules out an attack directly on the station. Time for Plan B! And back to camp he sneaks. Go camouflage!

"That fucking train will be here any minute, men," he yelled out, addressing them as they sat mounted on their whinnying and snorting steeds. "We've got to move fast. And whatever planning we do is going to be on the run. We'll head east five miles or so - completely out of sight or signal of the station - and make our move." Though for the life of him he didn't know what that would be, Rockson realised as he whipped Snorter lightly on both sides.

Why is this guy in charge again? Oh yeah, Ultimate American, yadda yadda. Luckily, the author is there to help.

Reston, the baccy-chewin old-timer who may or may not have been introduced previously, but whom Stacy has all of a sudden remembered, spits some baccy and remembers that he knows all about trains!

Yes, according to Reston, all trains have a Dead Man's Throttle, which the engineer must grip at all times in case he dies en route and sends everyone to their runaway-train doom. So all they have to do is kill the engineer, and the train will stop, and then they can disable the comms gear and board the train and get a quick ride to DC!

"Remind me to talk to you more often," says Rock, at which Reston spits more baccy and fades back into obscurity once more, his plot purpose accomplished.

They were about to ride the rails - the first Americans to do so in a hundred years. not counting Reston who we've forgotten about already

!
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Rock wriggles on his stomach towards Nebraska Station, knife in hand - if any killing is to be done, it must be silent, else ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE. The station (complete with ticket window) is full of high-ranking Russian officers, all slapping leather gloves in their hands in proper enemy-officer fashion, and waiting for the train to turn up so they can escape from Killov or something. But in any case, this rules out an attack directly on the station. Time for Plan B! And back to camp he sneaks. Go camouflage!

What was plan A? Hide behind a leafy branch until you can sneak onto a train? Then sit down and hope the Soviets assume there's a tree growing onboard?

They were about to ride the rails - the first Americans to do so in a hundred years.

Even discounting Reston, that is remarkably impractical on the part of the Soviets. Are the ticket men on every single train all Russian born? What about the cooks? Just how many people are left in Russia if can't delegate these simple tasks to locals. I guess Stacey is just assuming that no 'Mericans do any collaborating (and calling a cook a collaborator is...rough).

They must not have any Soviet-style forced relocation of Americans either. That would have been a nice opportunity to believably stick it to the commies, but I'm probably overthinking this.

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Are the ticket men on every single train all Russian born? What about the cooks? Just how many people are left in Russia if can't delegate these simple tasks to locals. I guess Stacey is just assuming that no 'Mericans do any collaborating (and calling a cook a collaborator is...rough).

Or they're mindbroken slaves and can no longer be considered 'Mericans.

Only a fool goes looking for logic in the chambers of Stacy's brain.

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"American" is a state of mind. Send me your poor, your enslaved, your huddled cannibals yearning to be fed, your wretched French-speaking panther-women, and I will leave them in the wilderness to get eaten by megapedes while dashing off to rescue my girlfriend yet again.

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Chapter Fifteen and the Great Train Robbery is about to begin! Detroit and McCaughlin get a couple of lines each to banter about how they look like Jesse James/a pirate/a Mexican bandito, though luckily Stacy this time spares us a pained explanation of how post-apocalyptic freedom fighters have those particular cultural references to hand. Probably because his creative juices are concentrated on bringing us some more authentic Australianisms.

"See mates?" <Boyd> said, twisting around in his square saddle that rested between the beast's twin humps. "I promised you some action, some real bluey to write home about to your mums and pas and all your cryin' loved ones."

"That you did, that you did," the beaming Aussie fighters echoed back.

"Time to break out the Foster's now," a loud voice exclaimed from the back of the pack.

"Now, now, me fellow 'ockers," the Austrialian commander chided them, "we ain't committed our heroics for the day, have we? After we take the train - then the amber hits the mucous membrane. But protect that Biteback what's carrying the brew. Don't let a thing happen to a hair on his bloody head." They shunted the animal to the very back of the supply beasts, squeezing him in tightly between two others so they'd catch any stray bullets - not he.

So... they're planning on taking the camels on the train too?? :stunned:

Rock puts his ear to the tracks to listen for when the train might be arriving - clearly he has lost the "timetable" already, or perhaps thinks he might miss the sight of, you know, the actual train coming through the impenetrable mountainous jungle of Nebraska. And here it comes! All the Freefighters stare in awe, as they have only ever seen black and white photos of trains before. I guess all the colour photos and film footage got destroyed in the war or something, unlike those pictures of Jesse James and Mexican banditos.

The engine zooms past, billowing smoke, for apparently this is a steam train, I suppose as befits an occupying army that still communicates by telegram. And inside is the engineer, the man they have to kill!

Rock kicks Snorter into a gallop, and they chase after the train, which has slowed to 20mph as it rounds the bend. Detroit and Chen are similarly trying to board the Communications Car just behind him, to stop the Russians from sending a distress call.

The engineer suddenly sensed something and turned his head. A look of complete terror crossed his face, his cheeks turning bright red. He pushed the waist-high throttle forward at the same instant he reached for a pistol on the shelf in front of him. But Rock's .12 gauge equalizer sent out a hailstorm of steel that ripped into the man's abdomen, releasing his internal organs onto the floor in a single tidal wave of blood. The engineer looked down at his own guts and then slumped to the floor.

But the train still doesn't slow! Turns out the engineer has fallen onto the Dead Man's Throttle and propped it up. Pfft, Russian designers eh? Rock tells Snorter to run like he's never run before, then jumps from horse onto the speeding train!

Sadly, the engineer was not alone in the engine, there's also a guy covered in coal dust holding a shotgun. Yes, it really IS a steam train. Now that the engineer is dead, he can be promoted! But first he has to kill Rockson. Rock knows it's too late to jump out of the way, and braces himself for death...

...but then a boomerang comes through the window and chops the other guy's head off. Thanks Boyd! And at last the train slows down to a stop.

Meanwhile, Detroit and Chen have inexplicably waited for the train to stop before boarding the comms car, because that wouldn't be at all suspicious. However, the Russians are dumbasses as usual, and hadn't even started transmitting when they burst in and kill all but 2 of the techs.

One Russian ("a skinny acned man with thick-lensed glasses") offers abject surrender, so they ask him to transmit a message telling Russian HQ that all is well. However, the moment they look away, he starts broadcasting "We are under attack, we are under attack" until one of Chen's starknives hits him in the spinal cord "like a bird seeking a home" (??). Of course, this is treated by the narrative as "traitorous spotty Russian!" rather than "brave nerd", so it's down to the last guy to do their bidding.

"I'll help, I will, I swear," the cowering Russian replied. "I have family - children - here, see," he said, reaching toward his jacket slowly and extracting a picture of his happy home in Moscow. "See - three little babushkas. I have never killed any Americans. I am just a -"

Whoa there skippy! Three little BABUSHKAS? And there was me thinking that

would never be beaten for most inappropriate use of the word. All yours, gramma!

Detroit, in any case, takes pity, and assures him that he will see his three little grandmothers again if he behaves himself. The other officers in the carriages behind are not so lucky. While they all think they are on "a vacation cruise a la rails" (:rofl:), enjoying fine wines, gourmet food, young ladies and stunning views of the radiation-blasted landscape, the Aussies and remaining freefighters storm on board and massacre the lot of em. Now the Freefighters have control of the train!

I wonder who will get the fun job of shovelling the coal?

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This chapter is vintage Rockson.

Maybe next he can stop the evil communist Central Soviet Railroad of Utah corporation from completing the overland route to San Francisco! If they do that, the Russians will be able to move goods all the way across the country, and robber barons will flood the markets with cheap goods, driving post-apocalyptic Mom and Pop stores under! Soon Rock will be unable to get coffee and a hamburger at the local cafe, but instead will have to settle for a homogenized diners with kitch crap on the walls to show it's "local" roots.

Taking a brief break from rescuing his secondary girlfriend and her epic rack, Rock must save America and blow up a mountain railroad pass. After first sneering at the Chinese laborers who can't embrace or really understand freedom, Rock employs asymmetric warfare against the Soviet invaders and their cowardly attempts to rebuild America's transportation infrastructure! FREEDOOOOM!!

PS Fosters? :rolleyes: Thank god crappy beer survived the apocolypse.

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Whoa there skippy! Three little BABUSHKAS? And there was me thinking that

would never be beaten for most inappropriate use of the word. All yours, gramma!

Detroit, in any case, takes pity, and assures him that he will see his three little grandmothers again if he behaves himself.

Methinks this is an underhanded way of Stacy to comment on the lamentable state of 'it-takes-a-village' child rearing in Soviet Russia.

You know..."Little Sergei has got three grandmothers".

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