“Yes, yes, I think they just left everything,” she replied, her eyes suddenly burning with a touch of fire as she realized what was going on. “I was conscious the whole time we were brought to camp. I remember them looking at it and then saying they would worry about it later. They had to eat one of the other men they’d caught before he died. They just threw the cover over it, that’s right, yeah, covered it with that tarp, but didn’t touch a thing. I’m sure of it. But how did you get free?” she asked as she saw Stone swing his arms around from behind the post.
“Can’t talk, baby. Before they get hungry again, I’ve got to make my move,” he replied. “All right, come on now, dog,” Stone hissed in the darkness. “If you’re ever going to earn your keep”—which he knew as he said it had never been much—“now’s the fucking time. You’re going to have to run interference for me to that car across there.” Stone shut up. The dog didn’t need a fucking scorecard. Everybody was the enemy. It was easy.
He pushed himself off and forward. Which was all well and good except in his excitement Stone had forgotten he had a broken leg. He got about two steps, the dog darting on ahead snarling and baring its teeth, when he tumbled onto his ass in the dirt.
“Great!” Stone snarled at himself in supreme humiliation. But even as he hit the ground he was up and moving again, hobbling along on one leg. Just ahead of him, moving through the encampment carrying a long pole with empty water gourds over her shoulder, was a bare-breasted hairy cro-mag female, heading off to get water so the brothers albino could wash down their recently chewed repast. Stone slammed his knee up out of the darkness before the woman even knew what hit her. He felt bad about hitting a woman, but not too bad, especially when the excrement-smelling, hairy, low-browed, toothless hag he sent into sleepyland looked as if she should have been in Return of the Ape Woman instead of carrying water in Colorado.
Stone grabbed the stick and slammed it down into the ground right up against his broken leg, making a stiff sort of instant splint. Now he could move, he found out after just a few lurches forward. And once he saw that he could, Stone didn’t look back. The dog had cooled its snarling in the darkness, waiting for Stone to get his shit together. When it saw the Chow Boy coming out of the flame-flickering darkness like a maniac ready to kick ass, then the dog was ready too. It opened its jaws wide and the two of them took off side by side. They had to move right past the cooking fire next to the cannibals’ table. It was dark now, the cooking fire being allowed to burn low, for apparently they planned to charcook everyone else.
But he hadn’t gotten halfway across the open ground when the shit hit the fan. A group of five of the cro-mags dragging over a huge cooking spit from storage saw the two of them and let out a screaming chorus, jumping up and down to alert the camp. They threw their load to the ground and came forward on all fours, broken teeth bared like animals. Stone shuddered but he didn’t stop. Timing himself so he was on his good leg he brought up the stick he was holding and slammed one of the subhumans right under the jaw. The sucker flew straight up into the air and then stumbled backwards. Even as Stone’s foot came down he swung the stick back to the ground to help catch most of the force.
The dog tore into the next man who was trying, stupidly, to block the way. Stupidly because when you stand in the way of a charging pit bull without a bazooka to take it out, you make a big mistake. The slave futilely swung at the dog with a bone club, but the animal merely sidestepped the blow and sank its teeth into the attacker’s knee. The whole section of the hairy leg ripped out in a spray of blood, bone and gristle. But the pit bull was already past him and on, eyes darting back and forth searching for the next fool.
Three more of the beastie boys flew into the fray from the left. Stone had to stop completely, balancing himself on one leg as he swung hard in a wide arc with the pole. He caught two of them in the head at once and both went flying. The dog leaped straight up from the ground at the face of the third and caught him around the chin, biting down so hard the man’s whole lower jaw fractured into five parts and his face sort of bent in like an accordion. The dog spat out the dripping chunk as it never ate human flesh and was back at Stone’s side as they darted across the encampment. The distance to the jeep, which hadn’t seemed that far when he was tied up, suddenly seemed like the fucking Sahara Desert as they tore across it, trying to beat the slowly rising crowd of charging cro-mags. The albino brothers realized something was wrong now and came out of their stuffed semislumber as they heard the screams of their underlings.
“He’s free, kill him!” Top screamed as he raised up an inch or two from his wheelbarrow. But the effort, particularly since he had just ingested about forty pounds of flesh, was tremendous, and he sank back down into the wheelbarrow with a loud thwack so that the four men who were under and. behind the barrow felt their backbones nearly crack under the weight as they tried desperately to hold the thing up.
But even as the foul subhumans came loping from every goddamned place now, Stone and the dog just headed on in a straight line for the jeep. Another hairy fellow jumped from a tree and Stone caught him in the head with his elbow. The man grabbed his forehead, which had cracked like an egg, and fell backward right into the arms of another of his apelike breed. The pit bull took out a foot, then a knee, then a face in the half light.
At last Stone saw the jeep just ahead, with no one blocking the way. He made a lunging leap and took out half the bones of his chest as he didn’t quite make it up onto the side but slammed right into it. Gasping for breath, he pulled himself the rest of the way up and ripped the tarp off the back part of the open jeep. Charise had been right. The brothers, after examining the thing for food and not finding much, just covered it and left it. Where Charise and her family had gotten a U.S. Army issue .50-cal. machine gun mounted on the back was something he would have to ask her about later, if there was a later.
Stone fumbled agonizingly slowly with the feed belt, slamming it into place, pulling off the safety. Thank God he had practiced with the major back in the firing range of the bunker, with just such a .50 cal. His father had stocked the place with only the best. Because if Stone had been even a second slower he would have been a dead man. He slammed the lead bullet into the chamber, resting the feed belt over his shoulder as a whole group of the neanderthals came charging straight toward the jeep waving clubs and assorted sharp implements. He prayed and pulled the trigger.
The muzzle of the mint-condition weapon erupted with a roar of fire, and a load of slugs the size of small birds tore ass out of the steel barrel. The first dozen or so cro-mags were less than ten feet away and coming at Stone like charging rhinos when the bullets slammed into them. The slugs, meant to take out armored vehicles, planes, a small tank or two, ripped into the bodies like a wolf into carrion, shredded the attackers, sending flesh flying into the air in a bloody snow all around the jeep. He whipped the gun all the way to the right, where a large contingent were coming at him like a whole mountain slope full of gorillas, only these gorillas were armed with shovels, picks, and sledgehammers.
Stone pulled hard, feeling the heat of the .50-cal. as it burped out white-hot lead and the whole jeep shook beneath his feet. The subhumans fell beneath the withering fire like so many pick-up sticks being tossed to the ground. They had never seen a machine gun, or couldn’t remember from their past lives as human beings what the hell the things were. It was impossible that a single man, Stone, could stop their hordes. And so they kept coming, dying en masse, not even realizing what it was that was doing them in.
Stone heard growling from the back side of the jeep and realized with horror that the half-humans were sneaking all the way around. There was no way in hell he could swing the big .50-cal. around in time. And then as if in answer to unspoken prayers the pit bull jumped from the driver’s seat where he had been guarding things and took out two faces, snapping back and forth in the air like a windshield wiper of slashing teeth. Stone prayed the dog could hold back the ranks and concentrated
his energy on the ones from the camp. They just seemed to come from everywhere, out of holes in the ground, out of their human-skinned tents. Stone sprayed them down, glancing nervously at the box of ammo at his feet. There wasn’t a hell of a lot. Maybe hidden under the floor of the jeep? But Stone didn’t have time to look for ammo. If he stopped firing for even a few seconds the still advancing masses, waving weapons and screaming like a zooful of enraged animals charging from the bloody mists, would inundate him.
Suddenly Stone saw the two albino brothers being pushed down a slope toward the jeep. They were each holding a pair of 9-mm semiauto pistols and were firing like mad as their teams of savages pushed behind, running as fast as their thick muscular legs could push the great loads. Within seconds the wheelbarrows built up speed and came hurtling down at Stone like two battlewagons. The obese albinos fired away with each hand pulling the triggers relentlessly from their sluglike positions back in the barrows.
Stone let a dark grin spread across his face as he whipped the muzzle of the .50-cal. around and got the lead wheelbarrow dead in his sights.
“This is for all the poor bastards you ate,” Stone screamed out, though no one heard above the din of the firing and the screaming masses. But they heard the bullets rip into the barrow and tear it into smoking fragments that flew in into air. They heard it in the screams of Top as his fat flesh was torn into chili, exploding out in a torrent of blood that instantly filled the big wheelbarrow and overflowed onto the ground and beneath the driving legs of the pushers behind.
Stone’s smoking barrel found the other wheelbarrow as well and its inhabitant. “I’m sure you want to be with your brother, don’t you, slime?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled and kept his finger on the trigger in a madness of battle. The slugs tore into the albino and his transport, transforming them into a mixed smoking red mush that flew into the air as bullet after bullet stirred it around. Within seconds there was nothing left that was recognizable of the two. They had been transmuted into the same kind of indecipherable hamburger that they had turned Charise’s brother into. There was some justice, if little, in that.
After he saw that there wasn’t a bit left of the two brothers to fire at, Stone let his finger ease up on the trigger, thinking he should conserve some ammo. There was a sudden eerie silence as the whole battlefield stopped in its tracks and everyone checked to see just what the situation was. The cro-mags realized with both horror and joy that their albino masters were dead. And the fight went right out of them. The brothers were dead. There was no reason to fight anymore. And like the animals that they were, they broke ranks and ran in wild packs into the forests, howling and screaming at the moon, with the strange and exultory realization that they were free.
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
“HERE, help me load your father onto the jeep,” Stone said, as he pulled up at the aged shawled man, who had gotten only one foot up onto the back and then sort of become stuck. He didn’t remember how to do things too well anymore.
“Sorry,” Charise said with an embarrassed look as she pushed up at her father’s backside, forcing him to move forward into the back of the jeep from which Stone had shot down half the fucking town. He guided the blank-faced man to a built-in steel seat on the side and wrapped the blanket tighter around his shoulders and lap as it was a cold morning, the air thick with a frosty mist that bit into the skin, the lungs.
“Come on, let’s split,” Stone said, sliding into the driver’s seat. He checked gauges for the fifth time that morning. But everything was okay, filled to the brim. They had prepared well before leaving on their journey to Canada. They just hadn’t been able to prepare for fate. Charise jumped up onto the seat beside him and managed as much of a smile as she could on this cold, hard morning. Stone reached out and touched her face.
“Things will be okay,” he lied with as much sincerity as he could muster.
“Sure,” she lied back. But that was all there was these days. Just a forced smile, a word or two of total untruth. At least it held the spirit from slipping the last inch or two into dark madness.
Stone glanced over at the grave they had dug for Roger, her brother. There hadn’t been a hell of a lot to work with. But they had managed to construct a sort of coffin from wood and buried the remains with all the proper prayers and rituals they could think of. They didn’t bury anyone else. Not that any but the dead were there to stand wake. The rest of the subhumans had fled, never to return presumably. Only the willpower of the albino brothers had held the whole place together. Without them there was nothing. Just the rotting carcasses of the dead and the twins’ own sluglike bodies, which formed a large oily sludge in the very middle of the camp, a spot Stone couldn’t even look at.
He started the jeep and it purred to life instantly, thank God for small favors. But then they owed them upstairs after what they had just put them all through.
“Come on, dog,” he yelled, then whistled hard through chattering teeth, tightening his own jacket against the chill wind of the morning.
The pit bull appeared from out of the bushes that led to the river. It had a flopping trout held tightly in its jaw. The animal trotted forward, jumping over the bodies, leaping across mounds of half molded flesh. He reached the jeep and in a single fluid motion jumped up onto on the back of it and walked over to the old man. The dog dropped the fish at the dazed man’s feet and then put his paws up his lap and snorted happily.
“I think the mutt likes him,” Stone laughed as he turned back around and started the vehicle forward. It moved with a few lurches as he got used to the pedals and the steering, then they eased bumpily forward, riding over rocks and mounds. Charise pointed toward the left in the direction of the road they had been traveling when they were attacked. At last Stone was leaving the river valley. For the first time—in how many days?—he would be out of the claustrophobic claws of the place that he had to endure from the moment the avalanche had kicked his ass.
Still, things sucked, to say the least. All his equipment, everything had been lost in the fall into the river. And his sister, April, Jesus God, what was happening to her? He had been on his way to find her when—It seemed that the more he tried to rescue her from the hell she had tumbled into the further he found himself from her. As if he were on a treadmill that just pushed him backwards.
And yet Stone knew he had not the slightest choice. If he spent the rest of his life searching for her, if he ended up wounded, crawling, his very life’s blood spurting out of him as if painting a highway line, still he would go on. For she was all that remained of his family. And Stone knew that without even the possibility of finding her, it would be hard to keep his own damned engines going in this dark, dark world.
He would drive north with the girl, until they got near the bunker, then she’d have to be on her own. For now. Maybe someday there would be room for love. But not on this cold morning. It wouldn’t be far to the border. She’d make it. And Stone figured it probably would be better up there. It damned well couldn’t be any worse.
He would have to rebuild everything from scratch. He knew there was a motorcycle frame back in the hidden mountain retreat, even some extra wheels and welding equipment. The major had planned for every eventuality. Christ, he could tie some fucking smg’s onto the bars with wire if it came down to it. It didn’t have to look as pretty as his first bike did. Just kill as good. Because God knew there was enough killing to do on the bloody road to save his sister. And anyone who got in his way was going to find themself floating down a red river.
Stone heard laughter and turned around as his foot eased up off the petal for a moment. Charise was laughing and pointing.
“Oh look, Dad is smiling. Your dog is like a psychiatrist for him. See, he’s getting better already.” And Stone had to grin along with her, for the dog, its front legs up on the old man’s lap, had pushed its face right up to the shellshocked seventy-eight-year-old’s face and was licking his cheeks with long wet stroke
s. First one cheek, then the other. And even her father couldn’t stay within his terrified shell with that treatment. He reached up and half tried to push the animal away. Then he laughed. Out of the pale white near-dead face a laugh somehow emerged. And then another as the dumb dog just wouldn’t stop licking his face. As if it knew the old man needed healing. And even the tiniest bit of love from a dog might do the trick. And then they were all laughing as the jeep pulled out of the campsite. Laughing almost hysterically and the dog joined in too, howling and growling at the crazy skies. And it was a strange sight indeed, not that anyone was watching, to see them laughing so as they left behind a battlefield of dead who were not laughing at all.
A THIRD WORLD WAR HAS LEFT AMERICA A LAWLESS AND BATTERED LAND. BUT AMID THE PILLAGE AND HEARTLESS KILLINGS, ONE BRAVE YOUNG MAN HAS BECOME AMERICA’S LAST HOPE FOR JUSTICE AND FREEDOM. . .
Martin Stone’s on his way to a mob empire stronghold to rescue his captive sister. The avalanche and flood, wild warriors, and wild dogs that slow him down and almost kill him are hell. What he runs up against next is hell with the heat turned all the way up.
They’re not the Red Cross. They may not be altogether human. They’re The Hungry – and their taste runs to the skin and muscle of real men and women. Next on their victim list are Martin Stone, the Last Ranger, and a beautiful young virgin eager to live and to love. Against this tribe of fanatical flesh eaters, Stone has a small but potent arsenal – his bare hands, his naked wits, and Excaliber, Killer pitbull and one desperate defender of the Last Ranger.
Martin Stone is
THE LAST RANGER
America’s Last Hope in America’s Darkest Age
The Cutthroat Cannibals Page 18