The Vile Village

  DUEL

  TO THE

  DEATH!

  He was huge, a monster who had killed countless numbers of men usually with one blow. But Stone was fast—and he wasn’t about to fight like the oversized killer. The Last Ranger had his own nasty style—one called survival. He danced around the gang topman. Again and again his knife ripped into flesh and then pulled out… Vorstel staggered backward and slammed hard into the wall, cracking the back of his head—though it hardly mattered anymore…

  Then Stone heard a sudden sound and whipped around holding the knife at ready. But he was too late—Rudolph was there—right in his face—the huge knife with its cracked bond handle coming in like an ICBM from hell. In a fraction of an instant, Stone knew he was a dead man—that he couldn’t duck, move, parry or stab the bastard who was just a foot from his nose and coming at him. His whole body tensed up as he prepared to die…

  Also By Craig Sargent

  The Last Ranger

  The Savage Stronghold

  The Madman’s Mansion

  The Rabid Brigadier

  The War Weapons

  The Warlord’s Revenge

  Published by

  POPULAR LIBRARY

  Copyright

  POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION

  Copyright © 1988 by Warner Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Popular Library ® and the fanciful P design are registered 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: 978-0-446-56645-2

  Contents

  Duel to the Death!

  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

  One

  * * *

  The first drop of burning rain hit a falcon flying about a hundred feet up. The bird of prey had been in storms before—many times. Its feathers easily insulated it from any but the worst and most drenching of rains. Thus it stayed aloft, ignoring the thick drops that fell that day. It had to eat, find food. For some reason hunting had been very hard the last few weeks. The falcon didn’t know why. Such were not the thoughts of a hawk—to question time or cause and effect. But it did feel a gnawing sensation in its guts that grew stronger with every hour. So it hunted, searching for the prey it lived on—rabbits, moles, a lizard or two. It swung around in wide, lazy circles, more like a kite than a living bird, for it barely moved its wings or expended any muscular energy, so precise was its ability to use the thermals and currents that filled the air everywhere in complex waves invisible to all but itself.

  A second drop, and a third one fell. Soon the air was filled with the water, huge drops the size of marbles, falling from the dark clouds above. Then the falcon felt something else, stronger even than the hunger biting at its stomach: a burning sensation along its wings and body. It tried to fly faster to get away from the pain. But that only seemed to increase the electric sensation. It had felt pain before—had been stung by a wasp, had come in hard against its mountain nest and poked a branch through its wing. But these had been brief, sharp pains, ones that vanished quickly and healed.

  This was a new pain, a sensation unlike anything the falcon had ever experienced before. It was burning everywhere along its body now—fibers of pure fire that sent shock waves through the falcon’s entire sensory apparatus. And suddenly the falcon knew it was in trouble, big trouble. It started to head down to find cover but discovered that it could hardly use its wings. They, too, felt like they were on fire. The bird of prey began jerking wildly, its wings vibrating on each side of it in muscle spasms. Then the falcon’s whole body went haywire, twisting and flipping around in the air like some sort of rabid creature having a fit.

  It spun down from the sky without a bit of the breathtaking grace it had once possessed, and slammed into a field of small boulders, smashing itself instantly to a bloody pulp on the granite surface. The mess that was left of it seemed to send up a white smoke from every cell of its pulverized body. And as the rains continued to fall in a deluge, the steaming pile was quickly washed down the side of the boulder. In seconds there was nothing left of the falcon, not a single clue that it had ever lived.

  Martin Stone looked up at the storm clouds gathering above him and shivered a little deeper in his soul. He knew they were heading straight for him. Mountainous thunderheads filling the heavens like an ocean of writhing whales, twisting and grinding around one another as they descended eagerly toward the dry earth below. Had it been normal rain, rain of the old days, Stone would have enjoyed the drenching. There was nothing like riding along on a 1200-cc Harley Davidson through the pouring drops that had, in the past, been more exhilarating.

  But these clouds were different. Even though they were still relatively high, Stone could see the pulsing patterns of energy in their cotes. The damn things were like furnaces. Black as soot around the edges, then gray toward the belly—but with streaks of red and purple running through them everywhere like a system of veins. The clouds throbbed with luminescence, pulsing alternately dark and then light every few seconds. Stone knew that the clouds were radioactive—and that they had come to claim a shitload of living souls.

  As if in telepathic agreement, a loud whine went up just behind him on the backseat of the Harley Electraglide he was driving down a rutted backcountry road in southwestern Colorado. A furred shape put its front paws upon Stone’s shoulders and made a quite ungodly noise into its master’s right ear, as if auditioning for lead singer in a punk-rock band.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, dog, keep the decibel level down, okay? A deaf master is not a good provider.” Stone pulled his head away sharply to the side without easing his hand from the handle of his Harley as he moved down the increasingly dark dirt road. The pitbull suddenly lost its footing on his shoulder as Stone moved—and started falling forward fast, heading off the bike and toward the ground. Only the fighting terrier’s super-fast reflexes enabled it to throw its front paw forward onto the seat and twist its body back to the side, stopping itself at the last second. But its face slammed hard into Stone’s gun butt, which protruded from his hip, and the canine let out a howl of displeasure. At last the animal got itself straightened out and clamped both pairs of legs hard around the black leather seat. Its heart was beating like a jackhammer from the near fall at thirty-plus miles per hour onto the rocky road.

  Stone searched ahead for cover but didn’t see a hell of a lot that looked promising. He was in low foothills covered with mostly scraggly-looking firs—not much protection. Stone knew that the clouds and the rains they would release were highly poisoned with radioactivity. He had been fleeing the damn fallout for days now, staying just ahead of it. But it had caught up as it swept south and west—the remnants of an atomic bomb that had been detonated just days before. It had been aimed at him but had killed the man who had fired it,
General Patton III, a madman who had been plotting to exterminate select groups and races around America. Still, it all hardly mattered now. For the fallout, the high-rad clouds that had swept off around the countryside all over Colorado and Utah, was not prejudiced in any way. It would kill anyone it could, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, or species.

  He came to an intersection of four roads and brought the bike to a complete stop, setting the Harley into neutral. Stone pulled out a half-torn map and stared down at it through the darkening twilight. He couldn’t find the junction on it at all. But then, these were backcountry dirt lanes and probably never had made it to official registries—when there had been such things. His compass didn’t seem to be worth shit, Stone saw for the twentieth time that week. The rad clouds were affecting the magnetism of the area as well, making the needle of his bike’s built-in compass spin around and around like a roulette wheel unable to stop itself.

  Stone got off the bike, the auto kickstand snapping down into place, took out a fourteen-inch hunting knife, and held it firmly in his right hand.

  “Okay, pal—you tell me,” Stone said, not sure if he was addressing the knife, or fate in general. He gripped the stag bone handle and threw it up into the air. The custom bowie spun around about eight times and then came down—the point aiming at the road on the right. Stone picked the knife up, dusted it off against his camouflage pants, and re-mounted the Harley, disgusted to see the pitbull absolutely immobile on the back. Sometimes the dog seemed about the laziest creature on the face of the earth. It was tough—that was for damn sure—but it had definite slothlike tendencies in its character as well.

  He threw the 1200-cc into gear, and the bike jumped for-ward, the bullterrier having to grip extra hard for a second as the gravity started sucking it backward. Stone wheeled the big bike over onto the road on the right, the narrowest of the four, and shot quickly up to at forty miles per hour. He kept glancing nervously over his shoulder, but the damn clouds seemed to be hanging right over his head like immense black vultures, just biding their time until they could swoop down and peck out his eyes, eat his heart with cloudy beaks. He could smell the storm clouds in the air now. What they contained had a definite stench that was foul and dank, like the innards of some long dead corpse, something rotting and unfathomably diseased. Even Excaliber, behind him on the seat, lei out a loud half snort/half sneeze as he seemed to try to clear his black nostrils of the or. But there was no getting rid of it; the perfume of infinite rot was blanketing them as the clouds dropped ever lower, as if trying to touch the hair on their heads.

  The sky seemed to grow first greenish, like the cheeks of a cadaver—and then dark, very dark. It took hardly more than thirty seconds for it to go from a dim but seeable twilight to a hurricane black, as if the vanishing sun had been ripped from the sky and swallowed whole by the advancing army of clouds. Stone switched on the headlight of the Harley, and it cut a band of yellowish-white illumination through the black-and-gray mists of the road ahead, the air itself so thick with moisture that it was as if he were looking through a diffracting prism as the water molecules in the air bent the images around him, making everything shimmer and waver like a mirage in the desert. Stone had to keep blinking his eyes, squinting hard to make sure he could even see where the hell he was going. It was like driving into a dream—or a nightmare.

  Before he even had a chance to pull off the road and get under one of the junkie-thin trees that lined it, the black thunderheads, less than a thousand yards above him, let out a massive, thunderous explosion so that the whole sky filled with crackling lightning bolts that spiderwebbed off in every direction, streaks of fire slamming into the earth all around him. Then the great mountain of moisture opened up as if a dam had burst, and instantaneously Stone couldn’t see an inch ahead of him as sheets of water completely covered his face and eyes.

  He heard squeals of pain from behind him, and before he could tell the damn dog to shut up, Stone knew why. The rain burned! Burned like a motherfucker! Already, on his face and hands, and he could feel it as it soaked through his leather jacket and the thick camouflage fatigues on his legs. At first it stung almost like a wasp or a bee sting. But within seconds, as it penetrated his epidermis and made contact with nerve cells, Stone let out a yowl of pain of his own. The stuff felt like fire, like what he had imagined napalm would feel Like—he had seen pictures of people running with the stuff burning all over them. Water was supposed to be wet. But this fucking stuff burned up and down his exposed flesh like waves of flame—of the real stuff.

  Suddenly Stone couldn’t see at all, and his eyes seemed to explode in agony, as if razor blades were being dragged across them. He tried to stop, but he was steering blind. There was a loud crunching sound as the Harley slammed into a tree, and then he and the dog were flying through the rain-soaked air. They both carne down hard on the road about thirty feet ahead, a few yards apart. The pitbull howled from the sharp pain of the burning drops permeating its hide—already little pits of burned hair were appearing here and there, the pelt all red and raised. Stone found himself facedown in the stinking mud and tried to rise. But he couldn’t. Everything burned horribly. And before he knew it, as his mind reeled from the burning flood, he was joining the pitbull in its animal screams of fear.

  But within agonizing seconds the pain was too much for both of their overloaded nervous systems to handle. Like fuses blowing in the basement, their brains both clicked into darkness. And as the storm continued to howl overhead, sending reservoirs of radioactive water down over them and the surrounding land, both creatures—human and canine—fell into a merciful sleep. And as they slept in a total, wet blackness, their skin sent up little puffs of acrid white smoke wherever the rain touched it.

  Chapter

  Two

  * * *

  “Ugh, it’s uglier than you are,” a teenage boy, not older than fifteen, yelled as he ran along waving something burned and hideous in his hand.

  “Is not, is not,” his younger and fatter companion screamed out, running as fast as his thick, stumpy legs could carry him, trying to get away from the blackened mass of what had once been a deer’s head but now resembled nothing more than something that might have been found in the aftermath of Hiroshima or Nagasaki—a swollen, misshapen, charred mass of melted teeth, and eyeballs that had turned to coal, twisting like snails halfway out of their socket homes.

  The older teen, dressed in jeans, a tattered shirt, and not a thing on his feet, kept running circles around the fatter, shorter one, as he was so much faster. He poked the still steaming mess at the boy, waving it into his face.

  “Eat it, eat it—Chester eats it. Eats dead slime. Swallows it all the time.”

  “Fuck you, fuck yooouuuuu,” the fat one screamed, waving at the air with his pudgy hands like windshield wipers on overdrive. Totally frustrated at being unable to escape from his older brother and getting a piece of the hot slime right on his nose, Chester sank to his knees, put his arms over his head, and burst into tears.

  Ponzo, his brother, older by three years and taller by six inches, laughed for a few more seconds, wanting to squeeze all the sadistic glee he could from the situation. Then he threw the oily, burned head away so it landed in some thorn-bushes and sent out a gush of ooze where the barbs pierced its barbecued flesh.

  “All right, all right, you fat sissy—I dumped it, okay?” Ponzo said, standing over Chester and opening his arms wide to show he had nothing to inflict psychic torture with. Chester sniffled, peeked through his fingers, and seeing that Ponzo had given up, rose, wiping his reddened now.

  “Ahh,” Ponzo screamed, whipping his right hand around fast and squashing it against Chester’s face. The molten eye-ball of the radioactively poached deer crushed all over the ten-year-old’s cheek and slid down the side in a paste of black and pink.

  “You bastard, you. You bastard,” Chester screamed, wiping frantically at the offending substance with the sleeves of his long-sleeve plaid shirt.
He got most of it, but some stuck to him like burned jelly and left a sickening smell like a piece of burger left out in the summer sun for about a week. He reached for a little piece of it on the ground to throw back at his brother, but Pomp was already running off, laughing as the fat one followed behind, lumbering along like an out-of-shape cow.

  The two boys had been finding all sorts of disgusting objects as they ran through the fields near their home, a sprawling farm some four miles off. The rains of the night before had decimated about a five-mile-wide swath of land for hundreds of miles. And in its midst—though the boys had no idea what had caused the devastation—they found smoking heaps of things left in melted piles everywhere, the leaves and cones burned off trees as if they had been sprayed with a blowtorch.

  They didn’t know what had caused it, but they sure as hell could see the results. Their bare feet would have felt the high-rad moisture that still remained on the ground, in the soil, for it was hot like beach sand, except that the soles of both their feet were extremely tough, as neither of them had ever worn shoes. So they ran along, poking and prodding the nightmarish remains of all that they passed—raccoons burned down to smoking dust mops, elk with blackened horns set on burned-out husks of bodies, like things that had been dissolved by acid. Both boys had already seen some pretty nasty things in their short lives, but this was by far the worst.

  “Hey, look here,” Ponzo suddenly screamed from over a rise as the fat one lumbered up behind him, pressing his hands against his knees with each grunting step to get him up.

  “It’s a man—and a dog,” Chester said breathlessly as he reached Ponzo’s side.

  “Of course it’s a man and a dog. What are you, an idiot or something? Jesus, Chester—I don’t know about you.” He poked at the man whose face and arms appeared to be broken out in boils, the skin itself reddened and blistered in numerous places. Ponzo poked the tip of a branch in the thing’s stomach, then in its face. He was sure it was dead until the tip suddenly entered the prone figure’s now for a second. There was an explosive roar as the man sneezed violently, his head jerking up out of the mud for an instant and then slamming down again.