“Jesus Christ,” he whistled through his teeth. He hadn’t thought about that one. He heard a barking sound and flashed a glance down at Excaliber, who was staring up at the smoking missile headed right toward them as if to say you-do-know-how-to-deal-with-that-right? kind of look that Stone found most unsettling. He stared back up again and saw that the thing was directly overhead, the tail section growing as large as the side of a house, coming down right on top of him. He threw his hands over his head, which he knew even as he did it was about the most absurd motion imaginable. As if his arms would protect him from the blast of a ten megaton hydrogen bomb going off at his hairline.
There was a tremendous ripping and crashing sound that seemed to occur what felt like an inch from Stone’s nose, though he wasn’t watching, since his eyes were shut tight as sealed crypts. The ground quaked violently, shaking the antiaircraft gun and the seat he was in all over the place like one of those crazy rides at an amusement park. Then it all seemed to settle down, with just the whooshing sound of the fire from the silo filling the air with an almost soothing hiss.
Stone opened his eyes. And couldn’t believe them. The missile had crashed to earth not more than thirty feet away. It had come down almost as straight as an arrow, backwards, and the tail section of the M-7 was buried in the earth a good six feet deep. The dirt had extinguished what fire was burning so it just sat there smoking like a skyscraper of steel death as far from Stone as he could spit. He stared at the thing for long seconds and then got out of the antiaircraft chair and walked slowly over to it, the pitbull following cautiously behind. It didn’t like the immense missile and snarled at it from between partially opened jaws.
The atomic weapon lay there dead, little streams of smoke drifting up all around it. It hadn’t gone off. Stone could only think that the warhead was armed to detonate at a certain altitude. But it had never reached that altitude—and never would—lying here broken, useless. He looked suddenly around for General Patton. But the madman was already gone, his half-track tires disappearing in the snow through a back exit. And now Stone knew the son-of-a-bitch had two more of the H-missiles. And he’d use them. God, would he use them. Stone was going to have fucking A-bombs trying to find him all over Colorado. No matter what he did, things seemed to get worse. It couldn’t get much worse than this. Could it?
Stone heard a sudden hissing sound and looked around. His face instantly lit up like a Christmas tree and he felt a surge of love for the dog that almost made it all worthwhile. For the animal had walked to the very base of the hundred-foot ICBM, lifted its back right leg and proceeded to send out a pungent stream of piss onto it. A little cloud of steam rose above the pitbull as the liquid hit the still sizzling hot metal of the steel tail. Stone laughed out loud into the snowy air. And then laughed again. Never had a dog had such a fire hydrant to raise its leg to. And Stone knew that for the pit-bull, there could be no greater reward than that.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Three
“COME ON, dog,” Stone said wearily, turning and walking away from the immense steel spear of megadeath immovably imbedded in the ground like King Arthur’s sword as swirls of cottony snow fell from the sky. “Let’s get the hell out of here before we start glowing or get our fucking chromosomes all twisted and rearranged.” There was something about standing right next to so much potential destruction that gave Stone the shivers. And he wasn’t quite convinced that the thing wouldn’t go off at any moment. Excaliber let loose a final stream of steaming liquid and then put his leg back down. He sniffed at the ICBM for a few seconds, his moist black nose opening and closing as he tested the air for his own territorial marking scent. Then the pitbull turned, snapping his head up and away with a motion of contempt, as if it was he who had emasculated the missile, and ran over to the Harley and up onto the back seat, where he wrapped his muscular legs around the snow-dusted leather.
Stone started the bike up and headed out through the silo perimeter fence, a large section of which had been blasted apart by the Luchaire 89mm and hung in twisted steel tatters on its side like the jaggedly opened top of a sardine can. He drove into the white mists without a look back. It took hours to reach the outskirts of Fort Bradley, although even through the curtains of snow he could see the rising funnels of black smoke from miles away, hear the explosions still going off everywhere. The attack rages on, though it was now unclear just who was fighting who. The whole battle had seemed to have deteriorated into pure anarchy as bullets, artillery and tank shells streamed through the air like the fourth of July. The bastards were after the spoils now. The Mafia and the Guardians of Hell and the mountain bandits and the filth-coated slime who were beyond description were closing in on the fortress itself, wanting to grab up the booty of war, the heavy firepower that every man was doubtless thinking would make him king of the hill back in whatever shithole he called home.
“Good.” Stone spat as he watched the conflagration, saw the sky painted orange and red for miles above the fort. “Let them wipe each other out.” The less of the whole sick crew that was left, the better the rest of humanity would fare. Still, he had no illusions that they would complete the job. The toughest would survive. And they would take every bit of death-dealing firepower they could carry, to further their greedy little ambitions. Still, a lot of them were dead. And most important, Stone had destroyed Patton’s Reich before it had a chance to take root. He had given mankind a little more breathing room before the thousand-year darkness closed in.
And somewhere inside him, inside the pain and the disgust at so much death, inside the deep depression that he could feel threatening to overwhelm him from inside, Stone felt a certain dark joy that he had stopped the madman from turning America into an endless concentration camp. As bad as things were, men were still free. Free to fight, free to forge their own slovenly existences in the midst of the wastelands and the human predators. Hardly a chance in hell perhaps, but nonetheless, in some indefinable but terribly important way, they were free.
Then he saw Elizabeth lying in the snow. And whatever slim slivers of hope had been coursing through his veins vanished like a gob of spit in the hard ice-coated ground. She was prone, face forward in the white snow, her blonde hair spread out around her head. She lay right where he had seen her last. Right where she had looked at him with those pitiful doe eyes and said, “Come back for me, Martin Stone. Come back.” And even from several hundred yards off Stone knew she was dead. He could feel it in every cell in his body and he felt a wall of tears start to rise up inside him.
Suddenly his face twisted into a grimace of sheer hatred. For as he watched, two black-jacketed bikers came roaring out of the fortress gates and skidded to a stop just feet from her. He could see by the way they nearly fell from their bikes and staggered through the snow that the bastards were drunk as skunks. They bee-lined straight for her, bent on having their sick pleasure. Dead or alive, it didn’t matter to them. Didn’t matter if she was hot or cold, just fuck ‘em all like they were human garbage.
Stone roared the Harley forward as he heard the bull terrier growling hard on the seat behind him. He shot down the icy road heedless of going over, his mind filled with a boiling rage that felt like his skull would explode right into the flake-filled air. He saw one of the bikers drop his pants and start to lower himself down on her, but he never reached his sick goal. Stone’s fingers found the trigger of the .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the front of the Harley and he held it down hard. The hail of screaming slugs tore through the air and struck paydirt, flinging the half crouched biker backward through the air like a rag doll, his bullet-riddled body rolling over and over in the snow. And as his pal reached for a nickel-plated .45, his eyes wide as saucers, Stone swiveled the bike slightly and ripped the bastard in two, his guts spewing out over the pristine white ground, soiling it with a stench beyond death.
Stone skidded to a halt just yards from her and jumped off before the Harley had completely stopped, its auto kickstand snapping out a
s an internal mechanism sensed the lack of weight on the seat. He rushed over to her and kneeled down by her side. And slowly, almost unable to bear the feel of her cold flesh, he turned her over. She hardly looked real. More like a china doll, a princess from some child’s storybook. Her cheeks were so white, white as the snow that surrounded her, her lips like fading rosebuds that had dropped from the vine before they had ever reached their full beauty. Then he saw the small circle of blood, starkly red against her blonde hair. Just under the right ear, a hole hardly wider than a pencil, the blood already frozen over the wound so hardly any had poured out, just a few droplets on the snow beneath her head. It hardly seemed possible that such a small hole in her flesh could have such terrible results. But Stone had been around it enough now to know that death could enter through the smallest of doors.
Then he saw the note, a small piece of lined paper, protruding from her half unbuttoned jacket and his hand thrust down, angrily ripping it from her body as if it were a foul and alien presence near her snow white skin.
Just a little thank-you note, Colonel Stone. You took what mattered most to me—so I take what is yours. But don’t think that this evens us up. It doesn’t. If it takes the rest of my life, I will destroy you. Will follow you, will find you wherever you flee. And I will kill you. Of that you can rest assured. And by the way, Stone, just so you fully comprehend the situation, there are more missiles. The countryside is filled with them. Silos with my men ready to fire whenever I give the word. So look over your shoulder, and look up at the sky, and look deep into every shadow. And never stop looking, because I’m hunting you, Martin Stone. Hunting you until I find you, and send you into hell in a blast of atomic fire that will leave not a trace of the greatest traitor that America has ever known.
General Patton III
Stone crumpled the note with such fury that his nails dug into his palm, leaving little tracks of red. Then he threw it far into the frigid air so it landed near one of the still oozing bikers. He leaned down over Elizabeth’s motionless body and mindlessly stroked her blonde hair over and over again.
“Oh baby, baby, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve this.” He moaned the words in a voice so low that even he could hardly hear them above the wind-driven snow and the explosions that lit up the dark morning all around him. He remembered how warm her body had been against his, how sweet her whispers of passion in his ear. And now because of him, she was nothing. He felt as if he were going mad, a wall of hate rising in one part of him and another equally powerful wall of infinite sadness welling up in another. And with tears dripping slowly from his eyes, falling down onto her pale cold face and running down her cheeks, as if it were she who were crying, Stone whispered to her.
“I’ll find him, Elizabeth. If I die doing it, I will avenge you. I swear to whatever perverse god rules this sick world.” But Stone knew the words were for himself and not her. For she could no longer hear a thing. And it took every bit of willpower in his tired and racked body not to lie down in the snow beside her and go to sleep, forever.
A THIRD WORLD WAR HAS LEFT AMERICA A LAWLESS AND BATTERED LAND. BUT AMID THE PILLAGE AND HEARTLESS KILLING, ONE BRAVE YOUNG MAN HAS BECOME AMERICA’S LAST HOPE FOR JUSTICE AND FREEDOM…
Deep in the scorched heart of the western plains a sinister new fighting force burns its way across the ruined country. Led by a brilliant, twisted military genius, the New American Army plans to lead America out of post-nuclear darkness—and build a fascist new order on the bodies of millions of slaughtered “undesirables.”
Now Martin Stone will face the ultimate test of his skill and nerve. His time is short; his allies few, and his only hope is an army of his deadliest enemies. With them, he’ll confront one of the most devastating fighting machines the world has ever seen—and race to stop a nuclear nightmare that could blow America’s future into smoking ash…
Martin Stone is
THE LAST RANGER
America’s Last Hope in America’s Darkest Age
The Rabid Brigadier Page 19