Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

Then he plunged into a world of screaming, reeking, madmen who foamed bright red at the mouth, and swung huge steel truncheons through the air without regard for anything but the chance to destroy one more true man before perishing.

Advancing slowly in low gear, Feric swung the Great Truncheon of Held in a steady rhythm before him—right, left, right—without skipping a single beat or giving any red-eyed Warrior the least chance to get a stroke in past his guard. At each swing, a score or more Warriors were clove in twain at the waist, erupting gore and slimy greenish intestines. In moments, the blood on the slick shaft of his mystic weapon was so thick that it ran down his arm and baptized the spotless black leather of his fresh uniform with the life juices of the enemy.

Taking a sidewise glance, Feric observed Best close behind him, hammering away at Warriors with total ecstatic abandon, his eyes blazing with ruthless, self-sacrificing fanaticism. To either side of Best, tall blond SS motorcyclists advanced in an unbroken line, throwing themselves upon the enemy with superhuman courage and true Helder dash. Great swarms of grunting, drooling giants smashed at the Helder tanks with their truncheons in a futile frenzy, and ripped their own hands to bloody tatters trying to claw their way through steel armor plate, while the machine gunners snug inside the mobile fortresses riddled their bodies with a million bullet holes and the heavy steel treads of the dreadnaughts rolled inexorably forward over their still-thrashing corpses.

For Feric, the death struggle took on a mystic beauty.

Heldon and Zind were locked in climactic combat in this desolate place, not individual Warriors or human beings; the true human genotype fought the genetic perversion of the Dominator mutation for nothing less than sole mastery of the earth and the universe for all time. Every Helder soldier fought with the full meaning of this struggle buming like a naming swastika in his brain, his soul afire with the fighting racial spirit that Feric had kindled, his being and will totally merged into the racial identity that was Heldon itself. This immense reservoir of racial courage, will, and consciousness was channeled directly through Feric’s own soul, so that Feric Jaggar was Heldon, and Heldon was Feric Jaggar, and both rode a juggernaut of fate that could not fail.

The blood of the enemy that covered Feric and his metal steed and ran in rivers from the uniforms of his men united them in the holy communion of righteous battle. Every inch of advance was a concrete step forward toward the goal of an earth inhabited entirely by tall, blond, genetically purebred supermen totally free from even the possibility of racial contamination. Every drooling monstrosity that fell beneath Helder truncheons was one less cancer cell in the body of the world gene pool.

What was the life of any man compared to the magnitude of this sacred cause? To die in this battle was to attain the ultimate pinnacle of heroism in the entire history of the world; to survive it victorious would be to bask in the gratitude of a million generations of humanity to come. No moment in human history had ever or would ever offer a man glory to match this. Those who fought here today would become racial paragons for all time; the contemplation of his own place in the pantheon of the future filled Feric with a wonder that transcended both humility and awe.

Thus fired to glorious acts of superhuman heroism and tireless fanaticism, the racial entity that was Heldon tore like a god possessed by demons into the vitals of its total antithesis, the obscene carcinoma in the world gene pool that was the soulless, life-denying anthill of Zind. For their part, the Warriors of Zind fought with a ferocity that had been imprinted in their genes by a foul mutant race which held all flesh in total contempt save its own.

The battle, therefore, was the most ferocious confrontation that the world had ever seen, a true Armageddon between all that was noble and uplifting in man and the basest perversion imaginable of what were once human genes. Good waged absolute war on evil under the banner of the Swastika, and evil replied in equally uncompromising kind.

At the very point of the Helder forward thrust, Feric found himself set upon by twenty, forty, even fifty Warriors at a time. No doubt the Dominators directing the horde realized that to slay Feric Jaggar was to slay the racial will of Heldon itself, for the great presses of Warriors virtually clubbed each other aside with their truncheons in their savage frenzy to fell him.

For his part, Feric welcomed this concentration of the forces of the enemy upon his own person, for it only fired the fanaticism of Heldon to ever greater heights of heroism and ferocity, and the incredible speed and vigor with which the noble weapon in his hand dealt with the challenge and annihilated the enemy buoyed up the fighting spirit of the greatly outnumbered Helder warriors.

In his grip, the Steel Commander seemed imbued with Feric’s own mighty life-force, metal come to godlike life through the transcendent power of the racial will it served. Effortlessly, he swung the weapon whistling through the air, leaving a comet’s tail of smashed flesh and flying gore.

But still the Warriors of Zind came at him with undiminished fury, spitting blood, rolling their fiery pig eyes, and swinging truncheons as thick as a man’s thigh and as long as he was tall. Twenty of the creatures came at him from the left. Feric met them with a swipe of the Great Truncheon that tore through their barrel chests, bursting lungs, and tearing the still-beating hearts out of their bodies. At the same time, ten more came at him from behind; as he finished his swing, he pivoted his motorcycle about his right foot, and instantly reversed his swing to catch these mad-eyed giants at groin level, hewing their legs from their bodies so that they fell like stones and lay thrashing in agony on the bloody ground while scores of Helder motorcycles ground them to pieces under their wheels.

But as Feric successfully fended off this assault, a score more Warriors were upon him from yet another angle, and as he dispatched them with an over-the-shoulder sweep of the Steel Commander, the huge truncheon of one of the creatures landed squarely upon the rear wheel of his motorcycle and smashed it to flinders, forcing him to dismount and fight afoot.

This spurred the Zind Warriors on to even greater frenzies, but almost at once, Ludolf Best had leapt from his own motorcycle to fight at Feric’s side. At this, a score of tall, blond, blue-eyed supermen in tight black uniforms spattered with blood as red as their swastika capes followed suit and formed a phalanx of SS heroes flanking their Supreme Commander, inspired by him to feats of valor that nearly matched his own. This squad of racial heroes rallied about the incarnation of the racial will hacked their way through the onrushing Warriors with a force and fanaticism the sight of which spurred all the surrounding troops to fervent emulation.

Soon a whole great section of the Helder advance had crystallized into a superhuman brotherhood of racial heroes around the person of Feric Jaggar. Motorcyclists rammed their machines into slavering giants, leaping off them into the air to fly at more of the Warriors with their truncheons, moving with a speed and hysterical strength which made them seem invincible. Infantrymen dashed fearlessly into veritable forests of massive hairy legs, smashing furiously about with their truncheons to bring the Warriors down to their level, then crushing heads and stomachs with their truncheons, steel-soled boots, and fists. Tanks barreled forward at greater and greater speeds, grinding their way through solid walls of Zind protoplasm like armored bulldozers.

The incredible feats of heroism performed by tens of thousands of ordinary Helder soldiers inspired the SS elite guard around Feric to ever greater fanaticism and ferocity, which in turn spurred on the masses of the troops to redouble their already superhuman efforts, further inspiring the SS elite—an ever-increasing feedback of racial heroism which turned a whole section of the army into a juggernaut before which no power on earth could stand.