He was in the ground. Under the soil. Sealed in below the hard unbearable pressing weight of the earth that covered him for many feet overhead. He knew he was dead. He couldn’t quite remember how he had died, but nevertheless he was dead. And they had buried him. Except for one thing—he was still alive. Somehow. His mind knew where, who, what he was. There was no movement or warmth in his pale cold body but he knew that he was. Only he wasn’t. He was dead. The living dead.
There were other dead things around him. He could sense their static but still-existing consciousness beating out in impotent fury. For they were all trapped here forever. This was Hell. Worse than Hell. He couldn’t take it, to be trapped here, buried for ten billion years until the very universe came to an end. He had to live. Had to. Stone made the body come to life. He filled its cold fingers with warmth and made the leathery arms move. The corpse thing clawed at the dirt a grain at a time. His mouth and shriveled eyes were filled with the cold soil, crushing, grinding into him.
Still he clawed. Clawed and scratched with every bit of energy that lived in the soul of Martin Stone. And he created a hole in the dark dirt and pulled it down. His hand broke free above the ground and he could see a blue light that burned like a star. And his fingers clawed through until at last his skeletal shrunken head broke above the surface. The light filled his black eyes with glare so intense he was blinded. Something was roaring, a wind roaring through the worm-riddled holes that were his ears.
“Mister, mister. You awake or what? Your signs read that you’re coming out of alpha rhythm into waking pattern. Mister, if you can hear me, open your eyes.”
Suddenly Stone felt reattached to his own flesh. As if he wasn’t a million miles away, but in it. And it was warm and he could taste the oxygen filling his lungs like the sweetest perfume. He was alive. He opened his eyes and looked up into a pair of crystal-blue eyes with a face of an angel built around them. The face smiled and bent so close Stone could smell the presence of her female flesh.
“Where am I? What’s happened to me? Last thing I remember I was in the truck.” Stone sat up, suddenly alarmed. “My dog, where—”
“Relax,” the young blonde woman said, and Stone noticed that her eyes weren’t one color but seemed to ripple from blue to green to gray like a rainbow. She pushed him back down with a soft hand. “Your dog’s fine, you’re in the NAA Hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado. As to what happened. You almost died, mister. Came this close,” she said, holding her fingers just a fraction of an inch apart. “That bite you got on your hand—from whatever romantic entanglement you were involved in—had set in a number of different infections. But basically you had blood poisoning. The germs spread up the veins and the arteries, heading toward your heart. The doctor said, two or three more hours—and forget it. We pumped so much antibiotics, penicillin and every other goddamned thing we could find in this place into your blood we probably drowned whatever what was hungry in there.”
“I see,” Stone said, smiling slightly through a not unpleasant haze. He liked the way she cursed, the way she moved, everything about her. If there was a reason to live, it was standing right in front of him.
“You’re lucky, mister. Damned lucky. Fifty years ago, you would have been dead. But even with every drug known to man shot into you you’ve still been in pretty much of a coma for about two-and-a-half days. We didn’t know if you were going to make it or not. But about six this morning your brain activity increased markedly and—”
“How do you know so much about my brain activity?” Stone asked with a grin.
“We’ve got all kinds of heavy duty medical equipment here. Two operating rooms, and all this gear too.” She pointed across the room and Stone’s eyes followed to see computers, readout graphs, beeping lines that squiggled and wavered like electronic snakes.
“What is all this anyway?” Stone asked, motioning with his head in a circle to sort of include everything. “What is the NAA. I don’t know anything about the whole setup as I wasn’t given a bit of information from the moment I was rescued.”
“You’re lucky they didn’t kill you,” the woman said. Stone noticed for the first time she was wearing a nurse’s uniform, starched and white and tight-fitting in all the right places. He looked her up and down appreciatively. “They sometimes make sweeps of certain areas where there’s been a lot of trouble and just level everything. The New American Army, that’s who we are. You’re at the main headquarters of the NAA here in Grand Junction, although there are several other outposts that have been established, I’m not sure where. They don’t tell us a lot about what’s going on.”
“But what is it that you do exactly?” Stone asked. “I mean, army for who? For what?”
“For ridding America of the bandits and murderers and warlords who control everything. For pulling the U.S. back from the very edge of a barbarism that will make the Dark Ages seem like an afternoon brunch. You’ve seen what it’s like out there. We’re going to reestablish the United States, unite her again, rid her of the lice and vermin who are out there.” Stone had a strange sensation as he listened to her. For the words were something he agreed with wholeheartedly, but the way she said them—her eyes wide and almost blank, her voice rising—it was almost as if she were in some kind of stupor, or trance.
“How many are there of you? Who runs the show? I noticed, before I passed out, that everyone had ranks like the old army.”
“There must be about three hundred at this camp,” she said, adjusting his pillow as he began feeling very tired again. “More at other places. General Patton runs everything. He is the Supreme Commander. He was able to keep control of a small army unit that was in charge of a munitions depot. After America collapsed he came out and has been fighting his way around this part of the country, gathering men. Fighting the enemy wherever he exists. The general is a brilliant man. You can see for yourself.” She moved her hands around the antiseptically clean recovery room. “This hospital here, as primitive as it might be compared to the old days, is probably one of the most modern and well equipped in the country right now. The general is not just a master of strategy, but of organization, of gathering and distributing military supplies to all his units. Of keeping things working, and keeping men under control. All of us are volunteers, and proud to serve in the NAA.”
“What’s your name?” Stone asked suddenly, feeling more tired by the second and wanting to know who she was so he could call up her memory in his sleep, so he could dream of her to get strength.
“I’m Nurse Williamson,” she said, smiling a little nervously and looking down. “And you, we couldn’t find any ID on you anywhere?”
“Didn’t see the point, to tell you the truth, Nurse Williamson,” Stone said, liking the way the syllables of her name slid off his tongue like velvet. “I mean there’s not too many traffic cops giving out tickets anymore. My name’s Stone, Martin Stone,” he answered and suddenly his lips would hardly move.
“Martin, that’s a nice name,” he barely heard her whisper. Then she was injecting him with something and he felt himself falling into a pit again. But this time a pit of sleep—not of death.
CHAPTER
Seven
THE NEXT time he woke up, Stone thought perhaps he might actually make it. His body felt fully his again. It was as if he had reasserted, by sheer force of will, his being into all of his cells. Everything still hurt like a motherfucker. He felt like he had been on the biggest drunk of his life. He lifted his hand and looked at it. It was black and blue, with an almost luminous sheen to it as if the skin had been pressed very tight. It must have swollen up tremendously, but now it was almost flat again, just felt like it had been under a ten-ton press for a year or two. He looked up and down his arms but the red streaks were all gone. He remembered for a second his corpse dream—had it been real? He prayed not. If that was what death really was… he shuddered. Well, it proved one thing, Stone thought. He had always pretended, at least to himself, that he didn’t give a shit
whether he lived or died. But now that he had seen death, he wanted to live. He did give a shit. He would fight to his last sputtering breath not to go.
Stone took a deep breath, realizing it was time to get his life in gear again—if not actually zooming, at least hobbling along. He sat up, spun around in the bed and stood up. The white walls of the room undulated around him as if he were in a carnival funhouse, but within seconds his head cleared and he started toward the door. He felt a sudden pain in his right arm and stopped short.
“Shit,” he cursed as he saw that he had forgotten about the IV unit pumping white liquid into the vein inside his elbow. He reached over and closing his eyes pulled the needle out, letting it fall and dangle at the end of the rubber feed tube. It hurt. He glanced around and grabbed a swab of cotton from a desk next to the bed and a roll of tape and quickly and crudely wrapped the lightly bleeding hole up. He had to get moving. He started across the floor.
“Ah, Mr. Martin Stone,” a female said, opening the buffed aluminum door. “I see you’re up and about and”—her eyes ran quickly up and down his body—“I presume looking for your clothes.” Stone glanced down suddenly and realized he was stark naked. He felt suddenly embarrassed, vulnerable, his feet on the cold floor, in front of her. Nurse Williamson didn’t pull her eyes away, but just kept staring at him, just below his belly button. A thin smile jogged back and forth across her mouth.
“Not bad,” she said, stopping in her tracks and crossing her arms. “Not bad at all.”
“Come on, where are they?” Stone asked. “I’ll have a relapse and die for sure if you don’t tell me where my clothes are.”
She went to a six-foot aluminum cabinet and opened the door. “Here, you can wear these for now—an NAA uniform, roughly your size. Dress and I’ll show you around.” She walked back to the door, stopped and turned again, her eyes focusing on him again.
“Well,” Stone asked, starting across the floor to the cabinet, feeling like an idiot.
“Well what,” Nurse Williamson asked, flipping her shoulder-length hair around one shoulder and looking at him hard. Her body was beautiful. There was no other way to describe it. Through the nurse’s gear he could see the round curve of her hips, the melon breasts standing fully out, pressing against the white cotton as if they wanted to burst free. Now, if she had been undressed too, it would have been a different matter.
“Well—I want to dress for Christ’s sake, lady. I know it’s the army and all that, but a man still has his sense of privacy.”
“I’m a nurse, sweetie,” she said, smiling at him. “Seen lots of men’s bodies. Naked, dead, sliced up into so many pieces. I’ve seen it all, believe me, you get to know every part of a man. You know what I mean?” Stone gulped and dressed quickly. The woman had a way with words that made him feel his family jewels were about to be scalpeled away.
“Come on,” she said when he was ready. “It’s just dinner time. We’ll walk over to the commissary and you can see the camp along the way.” She led him along a hallway and then down a flight of stairs. The hospital wasn’t high tech, but it was clean, well scrubbed, light bulbs in place, all of them actually functioning. Stone hadn’t seen anything this together since he’d been out of the bunker. It gave him a sudden stirring of hope in his guts. It almost hurt—hope. He had pushed it all down. The new America seemed… like hell, from what he’d seen so far. He had been fighting through a sea of blood from the moment he’d emerged after five years of living hidden inside a mountain fallout shelter. And the people he’d seen had been pretty fucking bad. These were the first who… seemed even vaguely to be on the side of life. Maybe things could be put together again. Maybe Humpty Dumpty could be glued and stitched up and placed back up on the wall. Maybe.
“My dog,” Stone suddenly said loudly, feeling an instant wave of guilt for not having thought of it before. “Where is—”
“He’s fine. I promise you. He knew we were helping you. He was trying to help you when you went down—licking your face, trying to lift you by pulling your collar up, to get you moving again. The guards reported they had a problem with him at first. But once he saw that he couldn’t do anything and that they had good intentions, he let them treat you. He was taken to a special pound we have; they’re handling him well, I swear.”
“You don’t understand; he doesn’t get along with other dogs. He’s a real scrapper. I’ve seen him—”
“There are other pitbulls here, Mr. Stone,” she said with a smile as they reached the ground floor and walked along another antiseptic hall. “General Patton III breeds pitbulls here—as his namesake did. The dog handlers have much experience in handling the animal.”
“But—but,” Stone stuttered, somehow not imagining the animal allowing itself to be caged and fed army gruel—and God only knew what all.
“After dinner, I’ll take you there. First thing.”
Stone hesitated. He should see it immediately. But the dog would have eaten first before coming to save him. And he was starving.
“After dinner,” Stone agreed, walking a little faster as his stomach began growling from even the thought of food. It had probably been days and days since he’d eaten anything beyond the muck they had been feeding into his veins.
She led him past a guard who sat on duty at the front door. The soldier, a private, jumped to quick attention as he saw her coming. He was young, in his late teens or early twenties, with an almost gawkish look about him. He gave the NAA salute—fist about three inches in front of the nose, arm stretched out sideways, parallel to the ground.
“He’s okay,” she said, nodding at Stone, who walked just beside her. “He’s been cleared for minimum supervision. He’ll be in my custody.”
“Yes sir, Lieutenant,” the man said, dropping the salute.
“At ease, Corporal,” Nurse Williamson said. She led Stone out the door and into the sunlight. It was so bright it instantly made his eyes tear up and he had to stop for a second.
“Come on now, I can’t carry you,” she said, looking at him impatiently.
“Look Ms. Nurse,” Stone said coolly. “I was shooting craps with the grim reaper just twenty minutes ago; it makes a guy a little dizzy. You should try it sometimes.”
“Sorry,” she answered, giving him a real smile for the first time, which quickly froze as she turned away. “Come on, let’s move it.” They walked down a concrete pathway and out onto a main road, asphalt, very smooth and black as if recently put down, and turned to the right. The camp was laid out logically and simply—all square buildings with wide thoroughfares between them. There were barracks to one side, each about sixty feet long by twenty feet high, over fifty of them. A cleared field was filled with vehicles—maybe forty jeeps, two dozen plus half-track type vehicles covered with thick steel armor, on high reinforced super wheels—the things looked lethal—and more of the tanks he had seen the night they rescued him, nearly twenty of them, all the same model—the Bradley III if his memory served him right. Dead center of the wide parking area stood rows of gasoline tanks, huge thirty-foot steel cylinders filled with the valuable motor fuel, worth more than gold these days. On the other side of the main thoroughfare, a number of two-story warehouses for arms and munitions that looked, by the wooden crates standing outside some of them waiting to be loaded, filled to capacity.
Stone was impressed. Very impressed. This General Patton, or whoever the hell he was, had gathered a substantial strike force. Given enough time, enough energy, he might well somehow gain control of the country. Although how he could weave together the disparate criminal and even savage elements that the new United States had become was beyond him.
Stone noticed as they walked that the entire encampment was surrounded by a fifteen-foot-high fence of barbed wire crowned link fence. And from the electrical equipment that stood nearby, it was probably able to electrocute, even kill those who touched it. Machine-gun towers stood at the four corners of the camp and in the center of each gated wall. From here they comm
anded a view of cleared field around the fort that extended hundreds of yards. The place seemed invulnerable.
Nurse Williamson pushed through a pair of swinging doors and they entered into a boisterous, soldier-filled cafeteria lined with fifty long tables, every one of them filled to the brim. Stone almost reeled back for a second at the sudden encountering of so much energy. But no one really paid much attention to them—too busy cramming bowls of steaming food and loaves of bread into their mouths. She led him up along one side and to a set of trays. Stone walked slowly along the bowls of food, huge canisters four feet high with ladles sitting around them.
“Take as much as you want,” Nurse Williamson said, pointing down. “We believe in feeding people here. General Patton believes that a filled stomach is a loyal stomach.”
“He’s damned right about that. I’ve seen people die over a piece of bread,” he answered, loading up with what looked like beef stew with carrots and onions. Food like people used to eat. “Jesus, this is incredible,” Stone said with a smile on his face. He almost felt like a kid. Like he wanted to pile his plate high with everything. Take two plates, a whole loaf of bread. But he contained himself and merely filled the plate to overflow.
“Here, sit here,” Williamson said, leading him to a table that was obviously reserved for officers, roped off to one side, near some windows. There were about a dozen higher ranks sitting around the table chewing away and they looked up at Stone and the nurse. They took two empty places along one side. Some of the officers, captains, colonels, a few majors, didn’t look too pleased at his joining them. But they didn’t say anything.
“Hey, ain’t you the fellow they picked up just before the falls?” one of the officers directly across from Stone asked.
“Yeah, I’m the fool who ended up heading for Niagara Falls without a barrel.” Stone grinned back sheepishly. “And to every man in this unit I’d like to give my thanks,” Stone said, looking quickly around the table. “I really mean it. And the medical treatment I received when you all could have let me die. I haven’t seen this level of civilization anywhere—to say the least.” He took a bite of the pungent stew and felt his stomach growl. It tasted so good. Sending his mind back to better days when his mother had cooked thick stew on a winter’s night. Days gone forever.
The Rabid Brigadier Page 5