"My Commander, look!" Best suddenly shouted, pointing up the avenue with the barrel of his submachine gun. A rude barricade of beams, crates, and all manner of garbage and rubbish had been thrown across the street up ahead to bar the passage of motorcycles. Behind this stood a mindless horde of filthy, pathetic, Dom-controlled rabble, armed with clubs, cleavers, knives, and whatever else came to hand; these wild-eyed wretches choked the street ahead as far as the eye could see. Fluttering above this sordid mob were greasy, tattered blue rags bearing the yellow star-in^
circle—the battle flag of the Dom-controlled Universalists.
"Don't worry. Best," Feric said, "we'll make short work of these vermin!" For indeed, he had fitted out the roadsteamer for dealing with just such tactics.
Twenty yards from the barricade, the machine gunners on the roadsteamer opened up. The jeering rabble behind 111
the roadblock broke into shrieks of pain, fear, and dismay, as their ranks suddenly were bloodied and decimated by the hail of bullets. Scores of the creatures spurted blood from innumerable gaping wounds and fell. Their comrades crushed the wounded and the dead underfoot, pressing and clawing at each other in a frantic and futile attempt to fall back up the street away from the Swastika force; since the street was packed for its entire length, this action proved as impossible as it was craven.
The plow of the roadsteamer struck the rude barricade at twenty-five miles an hour, smashing it to flinders, and pushing the rubble aside. The SS gunners inside the roadsteamer began firing massed volleys into the grimy tenements on either side of the street, feeding the panic.
"Forward!" Feric shouted at the top of his lungs, waving the Great Truncheon of Held high overhead. As the guns of the roadsteamer fell silent, the command car, surrounded by its honor guard of SS motorcycles, led the huge formation of marching Knights around the steamer and straight into the press of Universalist scum.
The truncheons of the Knights rose and fell like pile drivers, pounding screaming Dom-controlled creatures into the ground; chains whirled through the air like wind-mills, cracking open Universalist heads like so many rotten eggs. A dozen huge fellows carrying long knives suddenly rushed through the screen of motorcycles straight at the command car, their eyes aglow with the mindless frenzy of Dominator slaves, flecks of slaver wetting their lips.
"My Commander!" Best shouted, as his submachine gun tore two of the wretches to pieces. Feric felt the limitless power of the Steel Commander course through his being; with a savage battle cry, he swung the truncheon effortlessly through the air. It struck the first two attackers on the chest and passed through their flesh as if it were so much cheese, cutting them in half in an eruption of organs and gore. Recovering, Feric smashed the skulls of three more, while Best and Remler dealt with the rest with their submachine guns.
Like a herd of stampeding cattle or a pack of fear-crazed swine, the rabble scrambled frantically backward, crushing scores of their own comrades in their cowardly frenzy to escape the irresistible wrath of the forces of the Swastika. As the Swastika column fought its way up Torm Avenue, squads of Knights and SS entered the foul warrens, and dragged out suspicious wretches who had held 112
back from the fray; these were almost certainly Doms, and were summarily executed on the spot. Once they were cleared of these vermin, the tenements were put to the torch for good measure.
As the column advanced up the street toward Oak Park with ever-greater momentum, Feric's car passed through a corridor of fire and smoke as the tenements and warrens of malodorous Borburg went up in purifying flame. The street was strewn with more than the usual offal, that is to say, with the broken bodies of Dominators and their Universalist lackeys. A furtive figure darted out of the doorway of a flaming building; instantly Best cut the Dom to pieces with his submachine 'gun.
Suddenly, one of the bodies over which Feric's car was passing leaped up, caught hold of the body of the car, and thrust a long, gore-caked dagger at Feric's throat, screaming: "Die human filth!" Unable to bring the Steel Commander into play, Peric caught the howling Dom by the throat with his left hand, and squeezed until the creature's eyes rolled up white, then tossed the body back from whence it came.
