The Rabid Brigadier

by Craig Sargent

  They floated for hours and if Stone was thankful for anything it was that the skies at least seemed to be clearing. Another downpour would fill the raft—and that would be that. He wasn’t sure but it felt like the current, which originally had been in the direction of the water wall, now seemed to have reversed and that they were starting to move toward the mountains, still miles off. After an hour he was sure of it. The current picked up and the raft with the huge Harley bouncing in its center seemed to virtually motor forward, leaving a little trail of white bubbles behind them.

  They rode this way, unable to do a thing about their direction except watch. The feeble sun that had finally broken through sank behind them as if into the lake and the night fell like a steel gate over the world. Still the raft surged forward, now gaining speed as the mountains loomed larger, lit on their snow-tipped peaks by a crescent moon hanging like a ghostly sickle in the sky. Then they were there, the slopes almost within reach, yet no way of reaching them. With the immense weight of the bike, paddling was absurd. There wasn’t a fucking thing he could do to control the thing at all. Stone had never felt so helpless in his life and a kind of impotent anger filled his chest.

  The raft was led between two towering peaks so it was now on a river about a hundred yards wide. And with the tremendous mass of water fed into it the going got rough again as the relatively smooth surface of the lake turned into white foaming rapids that rushed forward, guided by rock cliffs on each side. The flotation device began spinning and slamming up and down as the wave motion grew to three-, four-, then five-foot tongues of water. The Harley dug deep into the bottom of the float with each slap of water and Stone began wondering just how long it could take the strain. A few of the seams along the side started to unravel, the nylon stitching coming undone like the sides of an old pair of pants. But it held—for the moment.

  As they shot down the river the sheer energy of moving water kept accelerating the raft until they were doing a good thirty mph. From time to time the orange float would bang against a boulder or the rough sides of the sheer rock banks and catapult them out again into the thick of it. It couldn’t go on like this for much longer. Something was going to give and he knew it wasn’t going to be the river.

  Ahead Stone heard a crashing sound like the pounding of an immense fist into the earth. Then he saw the cloud of spray lit up by the moonlight sitting above the river about a half mile ahead, and just the traces of a rainbow spreading from shore to shore. He knew instantly what it was—a waterfall. If his face could go a deeper shade of pale, it did, as his heart began beating so fast he swore it would bust through his chest. He glanced up at the scimitar of a moon hanging in the sky as if it was about to cleave the world below it in two, and wondered just what the hell he had done, just which fucking god he had insulted—’cause somebody up there sure didn’t like him.

  CHAPTER

  Five

  THERE WAS nothing to do but die. Stone knew he had been living on borrowed time from the moment he left his father’s bunker with his mother and sister April. His mother had died a horrible death at the hands of bikers and he was about to join her, wherever people went when their flesh turned cold. April at least was with Kennedy and somehow he knew the old man would take care of her—as long as he was alive anyway. It was the dog he felt worst about. He had warned the pitbull from the very start, had told him he was heading for trouble. But apparently the animal hadn’t quite understood. Stone reached down and petted Excaliber on the head.

  “Sorry, pal. You didn’t deserve this,” he said softly. The bull terrier looked up cheerfully and pressed his head against Stone’s leg. Moisture formed at the edge of the eyes of the man who had stared down whole gangs of psychos without blinking. He thought insanely for a second of trying to heave the animal toward shore. But it was at least thirty yards through violent whirlpools of water. There was no way. It would be better for them both to go over the falls, which were growing to the roar of an artillery barrage just ahead. At least it would be quick.

  Suddenly Stone thought he was hallucinating. A bright light appeared downriver, shooting rapidly toward them about fifty feet above the waterline. He thought for a moment that perhaps he was seeing some sort of optical illusion—the rays of the moon being bent by the aura of spray that hung over the lip of the falls. But the light grew closer and brighter until he could hardly look at it.

  “You down there, can you hear me?” Stone stared up, his mouth hanging open. He squinted through the spray of the river and saw it—a helicopter, blades whirling in a solid blur as it hovered almost directly overhead.

  “I said, can you hear me, man? There’s no time left to fuck around. You’ve got seconds left to follow my instructions.” The voice boomed out over some sort of loudspeaker mounted below the chopper’s body with a shrill metallic static.

  Stone cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed up, “I hear you. I hear you, for Christ’s sake.

  “We’re going to drop a cable to you. Tie it to the most solid thing on the raft. And move fast!” Stone started to scream up again and then realized there was no way they could hear him through the roar of the falls. He nodded his head frantically up and down and held his arms wide, signaling he was ready. A side door opened on the chopper, which he could see was painted camouflage stripes and still had U.S. Army markings on the body. He didn’t know what the hell was going on but he’d ask questions later if there was a later. A figure appeared at the door and dropped a loop of cable straight down. Stone caught it and was almost knocked to the ground as the inch-thick woven-steel cable caught him in the face like a punch from a super heavyweight.

  He almost blacked out from the blow and felt a sheet of blood pour down his face. Stone shook his head to clear his senses and then leaned down and clamped the eyehook around the center of the handlebars.

  “Are you secured?” The voice bellowed down again like the voice of God. “I repeat, are you secured?” Stone stood straight up and waved his arms up and down like a maniac, signaling assent. “We’re going to drag you to the shore. Hang on, buddy.” The man in the doorway waved a sign of encouragement and Stone suddenly allowed himself a glimmer of hope that he was actually to get out of this damned death river without being fish chow.

  The chopper pulled away slowly to the left, letting the cable take up the slack until it was taut. It wasn’t a transport, more of a scout craft with a single machine gun visible just inside the opening, and the chopper seemed to struggle with the immense weight of the raft and the surging current of the river. It was as if the flood didn’t want to release its prey—not when they were so close to digestion. But slowly, inch by inch, foot by foot, the helicopter pulled against the flow and angled over to the rocky shore. As they drew closer Stone could see other faces and vehicles stopped along the top of the granite banks about thirty feet up staring down at him, gesturing wildly to one another as uniformed men hustled down the slope and ran the few yards to the shore.

  And then with a final burst of strength the chopper pulled him out of the central currents and over into the stiller waters along the edge. Hands reached out from everywhere and grabbed hold of the sides of the raft and dragged it up onto the bank.

  “Jesus man, you are one of the luckiest son-of-a-bitches alive,” the nearest face, a pimply-faced teenager in a brown uniform yelled to Stone above the screaming rotors of the chopper just above their heads.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” Stone grinned back, feeling like he could jump up and kiss every one of the blurred faces that surrounded him. “Who the hell are you guys?”

  “Army,” the youth shouted back. “U.S. Army—the New American Army to be exact. We were just heading toward—”

  “I’ll take charge here,” a man coming down the steep cliff said as Stone stepped from the raft. Never had solid ground felt so wonderful. Excaliber seemed to have the same basic emotions as he jumped from the raft and barked wildly, running in happy circles.

  “Are you inj
ured?” the officer asked with the clipped quick tones of upper-echelon army brass. Stone had seen enough of them in his childhood. This one looked typical. Hard face that looked like it hadn’t changed expression in a decade, tight white lips, concave cheeks giving him an almost cadaverous look. He stood at rigid attention in front of Stone who suddenly saw the patch on his shoulder—two M-16’s crisscrossed over the American flag. And his rank—major. The soldier who had pulled Stone to safety, who had seemed friendly enough a minute before, now stood at rigid attention, eyes straight ahead, as did all the other troops, shoulders pulled back, chins tucked in, arms flat at their sides.

  “Just my heart.” Stone said, slapping his hand over his chest. “I don’t think it’s going to ever slow down. I was just—”

  “Name? Occupation?” The officer cut him off sharply. “We don’t have time to exchange pleasantries.”

  “Name’s Stone. Martin Stone,” Stone answered, starting to take a dislike to the fellow, even though he owed his life to the crew. “As for my occupation, I didn’t really know there were such things anymore. Mostly I’ve been just trying to keep my ass in one piece, and…” He was about to mention April and then thought better of it, remembering his father’s words: “Never tell anyone more than you have to. You never know.” You never know—that was the one fucking truth of life.

  “We’re ready up here,” a voice yelled down and Stone looked up to the cliff some thirty feet above to see more men setting down a series of interconnecting ramps so as to form an instant roadway straight down the side of the granite slope.

  “I’ll question you more later,” the officer said, looking Stone up and down as if he were examining some rather grotesque form of bug. Another cable was thrown down the ramp and two men attached it to the front of the Harley. The entire crew dragged the bike to the bottom of the steep ramp and Stone heard a motor start above them. With agonizing slowness the bike was dragged sideways right up the ramp as the uniformed soldiers, Stone and the pitbull made their way up the jagged sides of the slope. When he crawled onto the relatively flat surface that ran along the edge of the river Stone was if anything even more amazed than by anything else that had happened to him over the past twenty-four hours. For there was what looked like an entire army stopped on the dirt road: trucks, jeeps with field artillery hooked to the back of them and—his tired eyes could hardly believe it—three tanks lined up one after another. Troops were everywhere looking at him and the Harley being hauled up to safety. There must have been over a hundred men. Stone hadn’t seen such an organized and heavily armed force since he had emerged from the bunker. He hadn’t even thought that there were such units anymore.

  “Load the motorcycle into the rear transport,” the hollow-cheeked officer yelled to the team that had hauled it up. Stone walked quickly over to the man and tried to act as friendly as he didn’t feel.

  “Look, thanks a lot and all that, but if you don’t mind I’ll just take the bike and me and my dog will just be on our way.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible at this moment,” the major snapped. “We’re on a search-and-destroy operation with strict orders to eliminate anyone we find. This area—for your information—is a free-kill zone, meaning it’s inhabited by murderers, cutthroats and cannibals, and we’re sanitizing it.”

  “Free-kill zone? Sanitizing? What the hell are you talking about?” Stone protested, his voice starting to rise as he momentarily forgot that he was outnumbered by a hundred to one. “Who are you guys? Under what authority—”

  “Later!” the officer barked. “You will have plenty of time to discuss this all later.” Stone was liking the guy less and less every second. And the phrase “plenty of time” didn’t sound too promising. But he breathed out and tried to relax. It wasn’t the time or place to make any kind of move. The major waved his hand and the ramp was pulled back up and the bike wheeled back toward the transport that stood motionless about forty yards back.

  “You’ll have to come with us, sir,” two of the uniformed men said, suddenly standing on each side of Stone. They were young but carried stern expressions and M-16’s over their shoulders. “And please, keep control of your dog; we wouldn’t want to have to shoot such a beautiful animal.”

  “Sure, pal, sure,” Stone muttered, grabbing hold of Excaliber, who was starting to look a little pissed off at the whole scene. They weremarched back to the truck into which the bike was being wheeled up another ramp. The force was well equipped, Stone had to give them that. They seemed more like a unit of pre-war days than the typical ragged fighting man that he had encountered in the new America. He jumped up into the canvas-sided army truck, the pitbull leaping up beside him, followed quickly by the two guards, who apparently were going to keep a sharp eye on their rescued captive.

  There was a sounding of horns up and down the line of vehicles and they started forward again, the transport he was in taking up the rear.

  “Am I a prisoner or what?” Stone asked, smiling at the two young soldiers, who certainly didn’t seem like killer types.

  “Sorry, sir,” the elder one, with a single stripe on his sleeve, said. “We’re not allowed to discuss anything with you. Major Vargas will explain everything to you later.”

  “Well, who are you guys anyway? I mean, are you good guys or bad guys?” He knew the question was ridiculous, but he just couldn’t tell.

  “Sorry sir,” the soldier said, staring past Stone as if he didn’t even see him.

  “Well, where are we going? Surely you can tell me that? I mean it’s not like I’m heading out anywhere soon.”

  “Sorry sir,” the corporal replied in the same monotone.

  “You guys are really talkative. I haven’t had such a stimulating conversation since my dog howled last night.”

  “Sorry sir,” the soldier started to reply and then cut himself off as he realized what Stone had said. He looked away, embarrassed, but didn’t utter another word.

  Stone shut up. He sat on the hard wooden benches that ran along the inside of the truck and stared out the back. As the military convoy headed downriver they passed the waterfalls from which Stone had escaped by the hair on his balls. For the first time he saw what had awaited him and the pitbull. The water dropped a good hundred feet onto a maze of boulders below, where it exploded in a violent spray that rose into the air. Nothing could survive that drop. Nothing. He would have been crushed into something that would have made good soup starter and that’s about it. And suddenly even his loquacious companions seemed better company than the waiting jaws of the fish, snakes and snapping turtles.

  CHAPTER

  Six

  THEY HAD driven for about three hours in silence, Excaliber asleep at his feet, when Stone began feeling strange. Very strange. He thought at first it might be the bouncing, seesawing motion of the truck, for its suspension was clearly not in the greatest shape, but then waves of sharp pain swept through his hand, the one that had been bitten by the ear taker. Stone held it up to the dim light of dawn edging down through the open back of the truck and took in a sharp breath. The bite wound was swollen nearly an inch high and the entire back of his hand had started turning an extremely ugly dark purple. He pressed in on the flesh and it seemed to stay indented like a piece of rotten fruit, not springing back at all. Stone rolled up his sleeve to the elbow and again breathed in sharply. Bright red streaks ran side by side all the way up the inside of his forearm.

  Suddenly he felt dizzy, the world spinning around him, as if he’d chugged a gallon of vodka. He tried to speak to the guards but heard nothing coming out, just his lips opening and closing and his mouth dry as sand, without a drop of spit. He stood up, feeling as if he were suddenly suffocating and lurched toward the two men, his legs feeling as if they were made of lead. The soldiers glanced up at him from out of their semi-dozes with startled eyes and swung their rifles around, clicking off the safetys.

  “I-I,” Stone could hear himself stuttering as he headed toward them an inch at a
time like an old cripple hardly able to walk. Then it was as if all his blood drained from his body at one instant and poured out his feet and he felt so cold that he thought he would freeze to death in seconds. He saw the floor of the truck coming up at his face like a fist and felt a sharp blow as if he had been struck by a sledgehammer. Then everything went from black to gray and black again.

  Somewhere were voices and faces that looked like demons, and hands, so many hands, touching him, moving him. Stone had the sense of motion, as if he were being carried, and broken images of the world—a mouth here, an eye there, peering down at him, just inches away—the sky flashing overhead, brilliant with pearl clouds dancing to his rapidly beating heart. But it was all confused, insane, as if he were watching a movie that had jumped its sprockets and the images were nonsensical, without real understanding. The worse thing was how far away he felt. Though his senses still perceived things, albeit in a distorted way, his mind felt like it was on another planet. He couldn’t understand, comprehend anything. And somewhere inside of him, Martin Stone knew that death was very near, a dark brooding presence that circled around him, trying to pull him in, trying to draw him into its black fires.

  Then he was in a tent or something and there were bright, blinding lights burning into his eyes and needles piercing his skin. But he felt none of it, felt only a strange tingling sensation along his thigh and hip and up to his heart, like a little river of fire burning its way through his veins and arteries. Then there was darkness and terrible dreams.