Last Ranger Page 4

  Suddenly he remembered the Luchaire. He had attached this one as opposed to the first launcher he had had, which had been lost along with his Harley Electraglide in an avalanche. This one had a swivel mount so it could be pulled out and fired on the move. Now was as good as any for a try. Stone pulled his leg up and out of the way and unhitched the firing tube. There was no time for careful calculation, but he quickly tilted it up directly toward the center of the sky armada. There was time for only one shot, he had to stop to reload—and that didn’t seem too likely.

  Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes. The words tore through his mind like an advertising ditty. Only these suckers didn’t have whites in their eyes—besides, they were already too close; Stone could see the crooked beaks snapping in the air, the cold predatory eyes beaming in on him, preparing to make contact the hard way. He lifted his leg back so he was riding at a peculiar angle and pulled the trigger. The whole bike shook with a roar as the missile shot out the tube, and a blue flame exhaust, the heat of which Stone could feel like a blast furnace, shot past him on the side of the seat.

  But it was the missile end that was the thing to look out for. And the vultures didn’t have a chance. The 89mm shell set to detonate at the lightest contact ripped through the first few ranks of the garbage birds about a hundred yards away and went in a good two hundred feet before it found something hard enough to go off of. And it went with an immense explosion which Stone wasn’t quite prepared for, nearly knocking the bike over on its side. The force of the blast tore out in every direction into the vultures, absolutely ripping them to shreds. It was like a chicken butchering factory run by anarchists, for the vultures were sliced up into all sorts of odd configurations, few of them marketable. Wings, beaks, claws all went shooting off in every direction as the whole sky filled with feathers and a mist of blood that colored the high clouds scarlet.

  Stone withstood the initial shock blast and pulled his goggles down as he tore on straight ahead and into the mess. The blood mist was dropping now and the feathers too so that there was a storm of them. He could hardly see and had to slow down to almost nothing before he at last emerged on the other side and was clear of the falling storm of fluffy red soaked feathers.

  There were no more of them waiting for him. It didn’t make him feel great to see so much bloodshed, so many butchered vultures. But what went around came around, and these buzzards had learned the hard way. Stone drove on just as other flocks of them began circling again. But this time their attention was zeroed in on their dead brethren below. It made the other isolated bits of carrion as much as there was like a mere snack compared to the acres of pulverized and homogenized bird flesh. Within minutes of his departure from the killing ground Stone could see the new cloud forming above the serve-yourself vulture meat market like some vast swirling asteroid belt of brown bodies. And as he drove over a rise and didn’t look back again, the blood flock dropped down like a curtain descending.

  CHAPTER

  Five

  A young woman stood naked on a pedestal. The pedestal, electronically controlled, was revolving as greedy eyes took in the nubile lithe form, untouched, un-scarred and untwisted by life, unlike those faces that stared at it.

  “Beautiful, so beautiful,” the Dwarf said from his wheelchair as he tried to rise up on his stumps to his full height like a bird trying to present its plumage. Only he didn’t have any plumage to present.

  “Yes,” other voices spoke from around the stainless steel floor. They stared hard at her perfect beauty contrasting so starkly with their own physical abnormalities. The dozen people in the room, the Dwarf’s personal staff, were also freaks—three men who were badly burned, other dwarfs, a man with no flesh, only pulsing muscle visible to all the world. These were the Dwarf’s own, the ones he felt comfortable with within his private twenty thousand square foot chamber deep in the NAUASC underground quarters.

  “She shall look so beautiful for the wedding,” a female midget with a face twisted up like a Mack truck had run over it a few times, said from one side of the slowly turning woman. She was hardly more than in her late teens and her eyes weren’t really focused on anything. But her mouth was set in terror as if her face knew she was scared shit-less, even though her brain was numbed out by several drugs that the Dwarf had injected into her.

  “Yes, the wedding,” other voices repeated beneath the overly bright lights of the chamber.

  “Oh thank you all for your compliments,” the Dwarf said, bowing from side to side from his wheelchair. “For I too am delighted by my imminent wedding. And by the beauty of my blushing bride.” Blushing was hardly the word for it. The girl’s face was flushed like she’d been in the sun all day long from the drugs she was on, a side effect of the mind-altering chemicals.

  “Now we must complete the bridal gown design,” the female dwarf said, squealing as she hopped around on the floor reaching out to touch the naked girl, whose hands were over her pubic area, shy even in a state of near mind-lessness.

  “Yes, begin the fitting,” the Dwarf squealed in a high-pitched voice, and the place erupted in merriment. Materials and scissors were brought out and all kinds of fitting and cutting of fabrics went on for an hour as the Dwarf looked on with a most contented smile across his pushed-in face. At last the white satin dress and trim were all tucked into place with pins and needles and the girl’s hair was pulled back and done up into the style the Dwarf liked— one he had chosen after looking through a number of old bridal magazines. It was his first and only marriage. He wanted things to go—so nicely. And for his bride to look her most beautiful.

  “Yes, yes, it is excellent,” the Dwarf laughed, slamming his stumps against one another so they thwacked together with fleshy sounds right in front of his face. “And now the rose, the black rose—bring it out.” A three-armed man walked solemnly out holding a golden tray. With one hand holding the tray, and one raising the cover, the third hand lifted a black rose and reached out and pinned it to April’s shoulder. It was black as midnight, black as oil that had slept in the very center of the earth. It looked, to the Dwarf’s and the rest of the assemblage’s eyes anyway, so lovely against the virgin white of the bridal gown.

  “Yes, she is a picture of my divine dream,” Dwarf said softly. For the Dwarf had had a dream years before of his bride-to-be. The woman who would someday bear his children to carry on with the empire that he was creating. A son who would rule the world. And she would be the mother of the thing, of the monster that the Dwarf knew would surely emerge.

  “Come to me my lovely,” he said, sitting back in the wheelchair, as a dark smile flickered back and forth across his mouth. She was led slowly over by two elephant-faced twins to the Dwarf until she stood just a few inches away and was level with the misshapen handless and legless monstrosity standing up on his stumps in the chair. He looked deep into her eyes like he was searching for something.

  “Do not be afraid my child,” the Dwarf said softly. “No harm shall come to you.”

  “I am afraid,” she replied so softly it was hard to hear. But he had heard.

  “No, no,” the Dwarf laughed. “You will see, my precious. You will be rich and powerful beyond all dreams. Being the wife of the Dwarf shall make you the most powerful woman on the planet. Together we shall rule, you shall bear my children.” Even in the midst of her drug-induced half trance, the words seemed to do something to April, for she looked like she was going to puke suddenly and her face turned as white as a freshly laundered sheet.

  “Your—children?” she whispered. “Oh my God.” Her mouth opened to scream but instead she just sort of wobbled around in place like she was thinking of going into the land of Nod from the sheer thought.

  “Come to me my precious,” the Dwarf said again, spreading his stumps for her to approach. “Come to me.” He stared deep into her eyes and she was unable to pull her gaze away. She was in a deep fog, as if on the bottom of the ocean and everything was black all around her. Only his e
yes seemed real. They told her what to do.

  “Yes, that’s it, bring your face to me,” the Dwarf commanded soothingly. “Now kiss me. Kiss these lips.” He pursed his lips and the gold capped teeth within shone in the center of the egg-shaped face. She brought her face closer to the little hideousness but she felt her guts rising up at every fraction of an inch. Then her lips were against his and he moved his gold teeth against her so they felt cold. And then a thin reptilian tongue, squirming like a worm and cold, unearthly cold, slid into her mouth and seemed to try to wrap around her tongue.

  Suddenly April’s mouth flew open and a geyser of vomit spewed up into the air as she flew back and away from the outstretched stumps. A spray of the stuff landed on the Dwarf’s face and shoulders as she collapsed onto the floor, her overloaded nervous system unable to cope with the love affair. The Dwarf stared down at her, his face a mass of quivering rage as underlings rushed forward and dabbed at the puke with wet cloths. He was ready to kill but pushed it down as he didn’t want even those “closest” to him to see. He especially didn’t want them to see. He laughed loud and shrill, setting even the dullest of ears on edge.

  “She loves me so. Ah, she is overcome with emotion and tenderness. Ours will indeed be a fruitful union. Take her things to be sewn, we will move on with the wedding plans at full speed,” the Dwarf commanded his lackeys. They quickly dressed April, putting a loose fitting pajama-type outfit they had been marching her around in for the last week since the Dwarf had taken her prisoner and become engaged to her all in one fell swoop.

  “Give her more drugs,” he whispered, gritting his capped teeth. “She needs more.”

  “Yes, Great One,” the three-armed man replied, saluting with all three arms at once. “More drugs. We shall bring love to her heart through the molecule, not the myth.”

  “What is the union of pure blackness and perfect light?” the Dwarf asked the three-armed man.

  “Gray, excellency, it can only be,” the three-armed servant replied, bowing slightly as no one could look him directly in the eye. Not that anyone wanted to.

  “No, it is a blackness that can absorb the rainbow. A blackness with the qualities of white. A master color, Skarnoff. A color above all other colors capable of absorbing all of them as well. A ruling color, Skarnoff.”

  “Yes excellency, I understand.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” the Dwarf laughed. He needed Skarnoff for he was the most intelligent among the Dwarf’s underlings, and feared him as well, for he was immensely powerful. And fear was not permissible in the Dwarf’s world. Yet he didn’t wish to kill him, for the man had been loyal and obedient. He had helped the Dwarf kill many men and would doubtless kill more. As long as the man didn’t flinch when Dwarf looked at him, didn’t betray the slightest aura of traitorousness, he would let him live. And the Dwarf could tell when they were lying. He could always tell.

  “But now,” Dwarf said, slamming his left stump into the panel of the chair so it swiveled around and headed toward a large list that had been spread out on a table. He came to a stop in front of the thing and rose up on his stumps leaning forward.

  “Yes, meats, wines, fruits, drugs—all is here, excellent, excellent.” Suddenly his eyes froze on one of the pages.

  “What’s this here?” he asked, his voice rising. “There are no doves here to release as I requested. In my dream, there were always doves. There must be, you hear me,” the Dwarf was shrieking now at full pitch, his thin veneer of patience gone. “If you have to catch pigeons and paint them white do it and don’t tell me, but there’d better be some fucking white doves at my wedding—or your heads will have feathers glued onto them and be thrown into the air.” The dove procurers went fleeing from the chamber like they were running from the devil himself.

  CHAPTER

  Six

  DRIVING nonstop through the night Stone figured he made a few hundred miles which wasn’t bad considering. He hopped a few back country roads, but couldn’t hook into anything big or that lasted for very long. Most of the time it was over bumpy and fissured prairie land which seemed to stretch off forever. It was just nearing dawn, the sky starting to turn an ocean blue, when he saw a sign toppled to one side of the two-laner he had found and been cruising for an hour.

  “WELCOME TO THE LONE STAR STATE OF TEXAS.” And something else greeted him within minutes as he drove on into the state of giant everything—giant craters standing on each side of the road like an apocalyptic welcoming committee. Stone shuddered, he hated the damn things, not least because there was no way of knowing whether or not they were still radioactive. That was the thing about the stuff—it was invisible, yet could kill you as surely as a bullet or a knife, only worse. Still, these were far enough off the road, each at least two miles away, so that Stone figured he’d just move fast through it all and hope for the best.

  But within another ten minutes of driving he saw that there were craters dotting the whole landscape. This part of northwest Texas looked like it had been hit with a fucking barrage of the things. Stone knew there were air force bases out here, and other military complexes. But it looked like overkill to say the least. As he scanned the land in the light of the hesitantly arriving dawn he could count ten of them within his range of vision in all directions of the compass. Maybe someone had the bright idea of setting the oil fields of Texas on fire. All of them—and sending the whole damn state up in a blast of black smoke that would have been visible from the moon. But though they had bombed the shit out of everything in sight, no super oil fire seemed to have erupted.

  Stone drove on, keeping on the road because it gave him much better time than the bumpy wastelands. But he grew increasingly nervous about the craters as another one just ahead seemed to come almost up alongside the two-laner. He slowed down as he rounded a bend and saw the thousand-foot-high mound of rock and dirt like something from the dark side of the moon sitting just ahead about five hundred yards from the road. It towered over the roadway impossibly big and thick, and clearly man-made, for nature in her worst disasters never made things that looked quite like this, filled with an aura of death, the scent of it riding on the wind.

  It was with disbelieving eyes that Stone saw a shack built just off the side of the road, right beneath the shadow of the great crater. He slowed the bike down and looked with even more amazement when he saw that people lived there, kids and dogs jumping around in front of the place. And a big sign hung lopsided up on the caved-in roof.

  “SAM’S STORE.” And beneath that in smaller letters, apparently the store’s motto: “You want it—we ain’t got it.” He pulled into the place, figuring he could afford a minute or two in the proximity of the crater to see what the hell was going on. Stone could see one thing instantly as he drove in and put both feet down on the ground coming to a full stop. The kids were dying. They had all kinds of cancers growing on their skins, teeth missing, hair gone in big clumps from their small heads, leaving bloody gouges up top. Stone felt his Spam dinner rising up like a steer coming out of the gate. Even the dogs, running around like the playful animals they were, were missing huge clumps of hide, one had no ears, another a toothless mouth with oozing gums. How the hell could they all live this way? Didn’t they understand the reasons for what was happening to them?

  “Howdy mister,” a voice said from out of the doorway of the shack and a figure walked out. It was a man about Stone’s size who looked even more fucked up than the kids. He couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, and had sores covering every bit of his exposed flesh. Not a strand of hair remained on his head, just thousands of little red dots where hairs had once been. A single tooth remained in the middle of his mouth. Yet somehow the mouth was smiling and the man walking toward Stone acting as if everything was just fine.

  “Need anything, stranger? We ain’t got a hell of a lot in stock to be perfectly honest with you, that’s why we got the sign.” He grinned. “But what we do got ain’t rotten, broken, or dying. And we got the best prices
in the North Texas region. That I swear to you on a bible.” Up close Stone could see the guy was completely falling apart. It was as if his very flesh was rotting at the seams, as if everything inside might just burst out some day pretty soon right now.

  “Say, I know this is probably a dumb question,” Stone said with a shy smile as he sat back on the bike, letting his hands fall from the bars, but keeping the engine running. “But did you ever notice that you were living right next door to an authentic atomic bomb crater? And that you— and your family—seem to have developed a few medical problems from it?”

  “Oh heck, that,” the man said, waving his hand at the crater like it was some old horse from the next county come to eat his garden. “Shoot, them things is all around these parts as far as a man can ride. These bumps and stuff,” the man said, running his hands over his diseased flesh. “Everyone roun’ here got em. That’s just the way we all is now. Everyone.”

  “I see,” Stone said numbly. What could he say? Or do. The world was far beyond his ability to influence more than a few micrometers’ worth, if that. Who was he to even judge? These poor bastards had to adjust to what they had. And they had. So what if their lifespans were ten years or less. Or that their bodies were dripping swamps of ooze. People seemed able to get used to just about anything.

  “So what kin I do you for mister? We got some good deals on cans of lima beans, three of them and not one rotted open yet. Got a jar of mustard—unopened,” the man said proudly. “Got a can of genuine Budweiser beer. Was opened years ago, but we sealed it up again, you can still taste the original flavor. Whole can for a buck, a sip for a dime. We got—”

  “Thanks,” Stone said, shaking his head from side to side. “But I don’t think so.” The very thought of eating a single bite of the super-irradiated food, which had been soaking up God knew what for years now, was not something that Stone was about to pay money for. “Tell me, am I on the right road to Amarillo? I’ve got—some business there.”