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  “Dog, It’s

  Kiss-Your-Ass-

  Goodbye Time…”

  “It’s been fun,” Stone said, reaching down and giving a quick scratch behind the animal’s ear. Then they charged down the stairs, leaping over the bikes and the dead.

  Just beyond was the main computer center. Stone’s jaw hung open as he came tearing in. This must have been the center of the entire space fleet—and the Dwarf had control of it. Surely the gods had gone mad.

  Anyone who was trying to blow up the world was fair game in Stone’s book. He ran down the huge complex, firing at everything including technicians at various posts. His slugs rocked them from their seats. Suddenly Stone saw him ahead—the Dwarf, racing down a row of control panels in his wheelchair, punching out at rows of buttons and dials with an absolutely maniacal expression on his face. Stone prayed it wasn’t already too late, that this wasn’t the final launch sequence that Dwarf was punching in.

  He ran down the central aisle of the place, firing, holding the trigger and letting loose with a barrage…

  Also by Craig Sargent

  THE LAST RANGER SERIES

  The Last Ranger

  The Savage Stronghold

  The Madman’s Mansion

  The Rabid Brigadier

  The War Weapons

  The Warlord’s Revenge

  The Vile Village

  The Cutthroat Cannibals

  The Damned Disciples

  Copyright

  POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION

  Copyright © 1989 by Warner Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Popular library® and the fanciful P design are ragistarad trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

  Popular Library books are published by

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: September 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56731-2

  Contents

  “Dog, It’s Kiss-Your-Ass Goodbye Time…”

  Also by Craig Sargent

  Copyright

  CHAPTER One

  CHAPTER Two

  CHAPTER Three

  CHAPTER Four

  CHAPTER Five

  CHAPTER Six

  CHAPTER Seven

  CHAPTER Eight

  CHAPTER Nine

  CHAPTER Ten

  CHAPTER Eleven

  CHAPTER Twelve

  CHAPTER Thirteen

  CHAPTER Fourteen

  CHAPTER Fifteen

  CHAPTER Sixteen

  CHAPTER Seventeen

  CHAPTER Eighteen

  CHAPTER Nineteen

  CHAPTER Twenty

  CHAPTER Twenty-one

  CHAPTER Twenty-two

  CHAPTER Twenty-three

  CHAPTER Twenty-four

  CHAPTER Twenty-five

  CHAPTER

  One

  THEY were the the ugliest of men. Freaks of nature, mutilated caricatures of how men should look. Dwarfs with twisted limbs, burned men whose flesh was nothing but bubbles and boils, albinos with pink eyes, skin as white as chalk, and not a hair on their baby-smooth bodies, a man with dark green scales that covered every inch of him, yet another with a grotesque blood-colored tumor six inches long which grew from out of the top of his forehead. And others no less hideous. Yet they were unconcerned with their ugliness. It meant nothing, less than nothing to abominations such as these. If anything it was a tool for them, for it created fear and confusion in other men and gave the freaks power over them. Power meant all in their world. And in their own dark way, though few even knew of their existence, they were living proof that the brain, the will, are all that matter. The flesh is secondary. It is the mind that rules men.

  They sat on widely varied shapes and sizes of chairs—made of metals, plastics, foam—designed to fit each of their specific bodily contours. For each was distinctly different in size and shape. The ten freaks formed a circle around a pulsing electronic map of the U.S. set into the top of the twenty-foot wide oval-shaped table at which they sat. The map blinked and lit up everywhere as they eyed it with interest, digesting the information it displayed concerning their empire of criminal operations throughout America. Though an outsider, if he didn’t faint from sheer fear, wouldn’t have been able to discern the slightest sign of emotion from the misshapen men; they had all met in this central information room enough times over the past years to know one another intimately. It was known that the twist of the Dwarf’s mouth, the set of the albino’s eye, the coloration of the red horn-like tumor meant a particular emotional state. Thus they studied each other closely for the slightest clues without letting on that they were, though all knew that was just what was occurring. They were searching for clues that would help them gain some advantage in the Game, the Game that they all lived for. The Game of power.

  “Gentlemen,” an armless and legless dwarf spoke up in a high-pitched voice that was grating to the others, though none dared speak a word of protest. “We see before us a great evolution in the Game, a quantum leap, dare I say. For all these lights flickering before us are ours now. Look you of the Ten. Look and savor our accomplishments.” There was a reverential silence for a few seconds as they all glanced around at the computerized electronic map which lit up the center of the table with a brilliant glow. The map was contoured and colored as it actually appeared from space, with mountains that rose up several inches and rivers that almost appeared by the quality of their tinted plastic to be flowing. But it wasn’t the shapes or colorations of the multimillion dollar map that caught their eyes, rather it was the vast number of amber lights that outlined their domain.

  The amber blinking dots were everywhere on the map. From coast to coast they twinkled like stars of pure wealth, the chickens that laid the golden eggs. But these golden eggs were ripped from the already savaged populations—and the chickens were drugs, liquor, and women. The drug dealers and whorehouses that they controlled around America, a vast hidden but intertwined criminal empire, dwarfed anything the Mafia had ever dreamed of. Though there were blue lights for the Mafia operations, and for the biker gangs red, along with a smattering of green, yellow, and other lights representing the other major competing murder inc.’s who were all trying to struggle bloodily to the top. But the Ten were way ahead, far ahead. And the map showed it. Numbers didn’t lie. And their amber lights were like a galaxy now, absorbing the other colors everywhere around the map.

  “As you can see,” the Dwarf squealed, sitting in the highest chair, both to be seen and because, although they were all theoretically equal in power and vote, the Dwarf was still the power behind the power, officially unacknowledged—but also unchallenged. “We’ve made a surge forward in the last few months, since our last full Tribunal meeting.” Smiles crossed twisted faces. “Our holdings have nearly doubled and our drug operations have reached out to create and feed vast numbers of addicts. Life is hard in the badlands—we help to ease that pain. And we are being richly rewarded for our efforts.”

  “It is time. Time to strike now!” the scale-faced man spoke up with a rasping sound as if he had a tongue made of bone instead of flesh. “Time to claim what is ours by virtue of our strength, our will to power.”

  “No, no, not yet!” the Dwarf squealed back, squirming around in his motorized .50-caliber machine gun armed and armored wheelchair with rows of buttons along each armrest which he could manipulate with the purple stumps of his arms. “We could lose all by moving too soon. We’re just beginning to truly consolidate our power. Look around the board.” All eyes turned back again and grew silent as the Dwarf poked at one of the buttons on his panel and the wheelchair beg
an moving around behind them. He spoke as the chair whirred and though all heads remained focused on the electronic map, their backs rippled with shivers as the egg-shaped man went by. None of them trusted him worth a damn even though they allowed him to be head of the council of Ten. But then none of them trusted any of the others worth a damn either. Years of assassinations, poisonings, betrayals and constantly changing alliances had reduced their original numbers down to these ten. Now a sort of balance of power, balance of terror, had been achieved.

  “Look! Look at the board,” the Dwarf shrieked out. “Yes, we have many lights there. But so do others. Perhaps we are even the strongest now. But if the rest feel that we pose a threat to take the whole pie—I promise you whatever alliances we have worked out with them all will tear apart like flesh in a vulture’s beak. We cannot afford to take them all on. To allow a war to break out now—we would lose—whatever the rest of you believe. Do not be too greedy. Our ten year plan is developing at an accelerated pace. We will have it all. Never fear. What is the sound of a civilization collapsing?” the Dwarf cackled as he completed his circumference of the table and came back to his place.

  “The snapping teeth of the predators who feed upon her,” he answered his own death riddle. “There is plenty to feast upon in America. And there is time to do it.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.” Scarma, the radiation-burned freak spoke up from his side of the table as all eyes shifted to him. None, even the foulest of them, enjoyed looking into that molten face with teeth hanging out of his mouth as if on strips of taffy, nose dripping down around the left cheek, ears melted down to little pinholes around which mounds of lumpy flesh custard sat. This, plus his total hairlessness and single eye (the other was now the consistency of charcoal and sat like a dead thing in his face) made even the Dwarf tremble slightly when gazing on the melted features. “You’re winning in the Game now, Dwarf. It is to your advantage to have this thing be drawn out. That’s the way your approach works, Dwarf, slow and deep, like poison administered over years. But we others have our own approaches. I prefer the blitzkrieg mode. Strike fast, strike hard—before they know what hit them.’

  There was a murmuring among them as they looked around trying to gauge clues as to each of the men’s thoughts on this issue before they committed themselves. They were the most consummate of politicians, most of them ready to change as readily as the wind changes, depending on their self interest and the prevailing power. The Dwarf was the power now but he knew that he would be challenged. He had been challenged before though all who had tried were dead. For a man without arms or legs, weighing less than eighty pounds, the Dwarf was able to inspire fear and dread in the hardest of men.

  Suddenly there was a buzz on the intercom units built into the table, and a voice spoke out.

  “Security Chief Hopkins here—the prisoners are ready.”

  “Bring them in,” the Dwarf hissed into the recessed receiver before the others had a chance to say a thing. It was an opportunity to break off discussion of the country-wide situation, which was to the Dwarf’s advantage. Within seconds the thick metal doors of the immense high tech communications room they sat in whooshed open with puffs of air on their hidden hydraulic systems, and two men wearing green uniforms with their rank insignias torn off the shoulders, leaving bald empty spots that bespoke crimes— and punishments—came in. The two, eyes brimming over with terror-squeezed tears, were marched to one side of the table between four submachine-gun-toting beefy MP’s also with the same green uniforms, but these with the letters N.A.U.A.S.C. still on them. The men’s hands were bound behind their backs by plastic ties, their ankles as well, making them walk in short little steps like a Chinese woman of old with wrapped feet. They were as trapped as roaches in a roach motel. And they knew it.

  Just seeing the faces of the Ten made the prisoners freeze up and avert their eyes. Most of the men of the complex didn’t get to see the Tribunal, who preferred to remain on one side of the steel wall that stretched through the vast underground cavern, perhaps because of their deformities —or just because they felt safer deep underground, hidden away like slugs beneath impenetrable logs. In any case, the effect of seeing all ten freaks of nature at once was almost too much for both men and their hearts began palpitating wildly within their chests.

  “What is the sound a thief makes?” the Dwarf asked, wheeling around in his motorized chair, “when he is caught?” He rode up to them and stopped a few feet away, wanting to look into their eyes to see the fear in them, feed upon it the way a leech feeds on blood. For the Dwarf took great pleasure in the fear of others, in the terror of those who knew they were about to die. And these were such. He wanted to know those eyes, know the men, the way one wants to know a lover, so that when he killed them he would be able to touch that presence called a soul inside of them and see it vanish like smoke. For this was the Dwarf’s greatest pleasure—watching men’s souls disappear like blood-colored soap bubbles popping their invisible contents into empty air.

  “Please, please,” one of the men said, the shorter of the two, his face a mass of bruises, some teeth knocked out where the guards had had their fun back in the steel-walled cells, where they had spent the last six days thinking about what they had done. “We meant no harm. Only took a bottle for ourselves—not to sell or nothing.”

  “It is the sound of pleading,” the Dwarf answered his own question. “The begging of a man like yourself, trying to think of any way that he can convince those who hold the power of life and death over him that he is innocent— and should be spared.” The man’s mouth froze. The fucking Dwarf had him pegged too well. And he didn’t at all like the way the shrunken egg man was looking at him, like a rat looking down at a sleeping baby’s cheeks.

  “You have been accused of stealing four bottles of liquor from the NAUASC stocks. You know the punishment for such a crime. The rules are clear down here. Signs are posted everywhere detailing correct—and all that is incorrect—behavior.”

  “My God—my wife, my children,” the other younger and taller man began whispering through teeth that were clenched so tightly he could barely be heard even by the ultra-sensitive ears of the tumor-headed man that could hear a pin drop at a hundred feet.

  “They will be used, do not worry,” the Dwarf hissed as he wriggled around in his seat trying to get more comfortable. The four stumps of his missing appendages sometimes grew swollen, and hurt as if they were rippled with fire, as they did today. And the Dwarf’s growing excitement at the imminent fates of the two men seemed to make them swell even more and throb with painful waves.

  “No,” the Dwarf went on, his voice growing higher-pitched with every word. “Your guilt is proven—the bottles were found with you—half drunk. The penalty is unequivocal and irreversible.”

  “No, God no,” both men whispered as neither could even quite get up the energy to scream anymore. They were already beaten down into states of near mindlessness.

  “Yes, yes,” the Dwarf mocked their words. “The fate is sealed in blood. You must die. Both of you. And right now. Are you ready to go? Ready to see what lies beyond the veiled curtain, what lies beyond the screams and the blood.”

  “No!” the short one cried out. “No! No! No!” over and over in staccato delivery. The guards were pulling back from both sides of the men and they both suddenly noticed that the guards were standing ten feet away. The Dwarf locked eyes on the younger one with wife and child. He was the more interesting of the two. His soul would have more substance because he wanted so desperately to live. The Dwarf seemed to go almost into trance as the prisoner’s eyes were caught by his mad gaze and became hypnotized, unable to turn away.

  The Dwarf stabbed out with his left stump at a black button and a radio signal sent out the “go” command. Instantly the entire hundred by seventy-five-foot chamber bounded on all sides by smooth steel walls was filled with a bright, nearly blinding light. The freaks had to squint through their half-closed eyes to see though th
ey could hear the screams clearly enough. Streaks of electricity were ripping from floor to ceiling and going through the men to complete their arcs, for the two were standing on steel plates hidden beneath the fine tapestry rug. Similar plates were on the ceiling twenty feet above as well.

  The men were performing a most horrible dance, a macabre imitation of anything graceful. The electricity tore through them, their hands and arms snapped out wildly like chickens with broken wings, as their heads spun around on their necks as if trying to rip themselves off. Their legs were moving like jackhammers, as both men bounced around in place as if pogo sticks had been shoved up their asses.

  They screamed for a split second as it first hit but quickly stopped as megavolts of current made all the muscles in their bodies clench and unclench many times a second. It was as if they were computer controlled puppets—only the computer had gone mad and didn’t quite know which way to move them, so it kept changing their motions over and over as if trying out a thousand different patterns every second. Their faces almost lit up from within as if they had lights in their chests, and a glow emitted from their mouths and within their eyes. But only for a few seconds. Then they began smoking. A thin bluish smoke at first which rose up from ears and noses, between lips. Within seconds it grew much thicker and darker with a foul oily smell, like something long rotten was burning on the stove.

  The Dwarf’s eyes were locked onto the jumping men’s own wide orbs filled with a terror beyond terror, a pain of infinities. He watched as the flesh writhed in agony, watched the eyes grow like they were about to burst, and then as the fire within began consuming the body wholesale and it seemed to shrivel up beneath the skin, browning, the men’s eyes grew very small. And the Dwarf followed, went in with those eyes, saw them extinguish and tried to grab hold of the bubble of the soul as it rose up and away. He felt it for a second, and tried to catch a ride, a thrill, like some super drug. But he couldn’t quite get atop the thing. And it seemed to float away, not fast or in any great hurry, but slippery, intangible already.