Last Ranger (2 page)

Just seeing the faces of the Ten made the prisoners freeze up and avert their eyes. Most of the men of the complex didn’t
get to see the Tribunal, who preferred to remain on one side of the steel wall that stretched through the vast underground
cavern, perhaps because of their deformities —or just because they felt safer deep underground, hidden away like slugs beneath
impenetrable logs. In any case, the effect of seeing all ten freaks of nature at once was almost too much for both men and
their hearts began palpitating wildly within their chests.

“What is the sound a thief makes?” the Dwarf asked, wheeling around in his motorized chair, “when he is caught?” He rode up
to them and stopped a few feet away, wanting to look into their eyes to see the fear in them, feed upon it the way a leech
feeds on blood. For the Dwarf took great pleasure in the fear of others, in the terror of those who knew they were about to
die. And these were such. He wanted to know those eyes, know the men, the way one wants to know a lover, so that when he killed
them he would be able to touch that presence called a soul inside of them and see it vanish like smoke. For this was the Dwarf’s
greatest pleasure—watching men’s souls disappear like blood-colored soap bubbles popping their invisible contents into empty
air.

“Please, please,” one of the men said, the shorter of the two, his face a mass of bruises, some teeth knocked out where the
guards had had their fun back in the steel-walled cells, where they had spent the last six days thinking about what they had
done. “We meant no harm. Only took a bottle for ourselves—not to sell or nothing.”

“It is the sound of pleading,” the Dwarf answered his own question. “The begging of a man like yourself, trying to think of
any way that he can convince those who hold the power of life and death over him that he is innocent— and should be spared.”
The man’s mouth froze. The fucking Dwarf had him pegged too well. And he didn’t at all like the way the shrunken egg man was
looking at him, like a rat looking down at a sleeping baby’s cheeks.

“You have been accused of stealing four bottles of liquor from the NAUASC stocks. You know the punishment for such a crime.
The rules are clear down here. Signs are posted everywhere detailing correct—and all that is incorrect—behavior.”

“My God—my wife, my children,” the other younger and taller man began whispering through teeth that were clenched so tightly
he could barely be heard even by the ultra-sensitive ears of the tumor-headed man that could hear a pin drop at a hundred
feet.

“They will be used, do not worry,” the Dwarf hissed as he wriggled around in his seat trying to get more comfortable. The
four stumps of his missing appendages sometimes grew swollen, and hurt as if they were rippled with fire, as they did today.
And the Dwarf’s growing excitement at the imminent fates of the two men seemed to make them swell even more and throb with
painful waves.

“No,” the Dwarf went on, his voice growing higher-pitched with every word. “Your guilt is proven—the bottles were found with
you—half drunk. The penalty is unequivocal and irreversible.”

“No, God no,” both men whispered as neither could even quite get up the energy to scream anymore. They were already beaten
down into states of near mindlessness.

“Yes, yes,” the Dwarf mocked their words. “The fate is sealed in blood. You must die. Both of you. And right now. Are you
ready to go? Ready to see what lies beyond the veiled curtain, what lies beyond the screams and the blood.”

“No!” the short one cried out. “No! No! No!” over and over in staccato delivery. The guards were pulling back from both sides
of the men and they both suddenly noticed that the guards were standing ten feet away. The Dwarf locked eyes on the younger
one with wife and child. He was the more interesting of the two. His soul would have more substance because he wanted so desperately
to live. The Dwarf seemed to go almost into trance as the prisoner’s eyes were caught by his mad gaze and became hypnotized,
unable to turn away.

The Dwarf stabbed out with his left stump at a black button and a radio signal sent out the “go” command. Instantly the entire
hundred by seventy-five-foot chamber bounded on all sides by smooth steel walls was filled with a bright, nearly blinding
light. The freaks had to squint through their half-closed eyes to see though they could hear the screams clearly enough. Streaks
of electricity were ripping from floor to ceiling and going through the men to complete their arcs, for the two were standing
on steel plates hidden beneath the fine tapestry rug. Similar plates were on the ceiling twenty feet above as well.

The men were performing a most horrible dance, a macabre imitation of anything graceful. The electricity tore through them,
their hands and arms snapped out wildly like chickens with broken wings, as their heads spun around on their necks as if trying
to rip themselves off. Their legs were moving like jackhammers, as both men bounced around in place as if pogo sticks had
been shoved up their asses.

They screamed for a split second as it first hit but quickly stopped as megavolts of current made all the muscles in their
bodies clench and unclench many times a second. It was as if they were computer controlled puppets—only the computer had gone
mad and didn’t quite know which way to move them, so it kept changing their motions over and over as if trying out a thousand
different patterns every second. Their faces almost lit up from within as if they had lights in their chests, and a glow emitted
from their mouths and within their eyes. But only for a few seconds. Then they began smoking. A thin bluish smoke at first
which rose up from ears and noses, between lips. Within seconds it grew much thicker and darker with a foul oily smell, like
something long rotten was burning on the stove.

The Dwarf’s eyes were locked onto the jumping men’s own wide orbs filled with a terror beyond terror, a pain of infinities.
He watched as the flesh writhed in agony, watched the eyes grow like they were about to burst, and then as the fire within
began consuming the body wholesale and it seemed to shrivel up beneath the skin, browning, the men’s eyes grew very small.
And the Dwarf followed, went in with those eyes, saw them extinguish and tried to grab hold of the bubble of the soul as it
rose up and away. He felt it for a second, and tried to catch a ride, a thrill, like some super drug. But he couldn’t quite
get atop the thing. And it seemed to float away, not fast or in any great hurry, but slippery, intangible already.

A look of supreme satisfaction swept over the Dwarf’s face for having felt it for even an instant—the death of a man. Suddenly
the two corpses burst into open flame everywhere on their bodies. But still the electric bolts drove on, cracking and moving
around the two smoking, jerking shapes like they were torching every cell of them. The bodies blackened to the color and texture
of charcoal, and as the yellow flames swept through them, even what was left began disintegrating. Within two minutes from
onset of power they were hardly more than burnt husks that vibrated in the air.

The Dwarf stabbed out again at the control panel and then let himself fall back into his seat drained. The electricity stopped
instantly and the remains fell with hardly a sound as there was nothing solid enough left to make such noise. The Ten basked
in the vision of the glowing remains for several minutes as normal men might bask in a sunset or a mountain vista. Theirs
was the beauty of pain, the aesthetic of blood.

“Take the remains away,” the Dwarf said after a few minutes. The MP’s came forward and began vacuuming up the corpse powder
into huge industrial bags. “Take what’s left out into the main hall. Put them each in their own stainless steel urn, side
by side. And a sign above them: ‘These two broke the Rules of Assured Survival.’ And get a new rug from supply—make it a nice
dhurrie, something blue. I’m tired of this brown.”

M
ARTIN Stone stared down at the pit bull on the back of his Harley. The dog looked like it was dead, or damn near it. Nothing
was moving on the animal, not a breath, or muscle quivering. It had been like this for days now in a sort of coma as if it
were waiting for Stone to fix it up again, repair the knife wound into its heart that it had taken fighting at his side two
days before. Saving his life was more like it.

“Come on dog,” Stone whispered through jaws clenched hard so his feelings wouldn’t rise up. The very fact that he felt so
much for the damn dog made him feel like an idiot in a way. On the other hand he trusted the animal more than most of the
people he’d met these days. “Come on Excaliber,” he said again, scratching the motionless animal as it lay sideways half curled
up inside a low steel box carrier he had rigged up on the back rack of his Harley 1500. “You can make it.” He didn’t know
if the animal could hear him or not. But it couldn’t hurt to give the pit bull a little attention. Too bad there weren’t any
nurses around, that would surely have gotten the creature’s heart fluttering a little as it had a way with the fair sex most
men would envy.

The stitching along the pit bull’s chest seemed to be holding up well enough, and as far as Stone could see no infection had
set in. It looked red along the eighteen stitches that it had taken to open and close the canine’s chest. But the man who
had done the slicing had told him redness was normal. The once doctor had gone right in there and actually touched the animal’s
heart. Stone had seen it with his own eyes, the dog’s living, beating heart being held in the “doctor’s” hands as he had repaired
the slice along one side. It had seemed like a terrible violation of the animal’s body, which it was—but it had also kept
him alive, though just how long the pit bull was going to stay in that condition was a question Stone didn’t want to think
too hard about.

He put his head down until it was just touching the dog’s, and closed his eyes trying in some ridiculous telepathic way to
establish some sort of contact with the dog. Let it know that he was still out there trying to get it all together. He knew
he must be imagining it but somehow he felt for a few seconds like he was in contact with the pit bull and it was—if not ready
to do the turkey trot—still hanging in there. It was almost as if it were in some kind of suspended animation with its every
bodily function slowed down to a crawl. Maybe it was a defense mechanism that the breed had to protect itself. He knew that
every other trait Excaliber had been given via his bloodline made him about as tough as living things could get. Maybe the
dog had a built-in hibernation mode as well. Giving Stone a chance to…. To what? Damned if he even knew what the hell he could
do beyond what had already been done.

He lifted his head from the comatose animal and raised it up toward the low-flying mountain-sized clouds. It had been getting
darker all afternoon, but now as Stone’s eyes scanned the heavens, he saw that even the glow of the sun had pretty much disappeared.
Though it was only three in the afternoon it seemed to be night, a sickly night with a greenish tint to the entire sky as
if it was made of mold. Stone felt a strange sensation sweep through his whole body, like he was holding his finger in a socket.
He glanced down to see that the dog’s hair was all standing on end, pricked up by the charge in the air. Something was up—and
it wasn’t a winning lottery ticket.

Even as he walked back to the front of the bike and mounted up, the heavens seemed to grow a few shades darker and a ghastlier
green, almost like the face of a corpse, which Stone had unfortunately been seeing a lot of these days. Faces that didn’t
die in peace and sink into the ground but followed him into his dreams, all mixing and blending together into one great entity—the
sky itself perhaps. It looked like it was rotting, falling down in chunks onto the earth below. The air was oppressive, hard
to breathe, as if he were deep underground and there was no oxygen. Stone started the Harley forward, moving slowly as he
didn’t want to be caught unawares going any real speed.

He had barely gotten up to about twenty miles per hour when the whole horizon lit up with a thousand streaks of lightning,
blinding Stone. He had to slow down fast and throw both feet down onto the ground to keep upright. The spears of lightning
sparked and bolted in all directions, but he was able to see by cupping one hand over his eyes and squinting. It looked like
all hell was breaking loose as the clouds were being whipped around by frenzied winds. They broke into massive sections and
flew around wildly like fish seeking deeper waters. The winds picked up fast, thirty, then forty miles an hour at least. And
the loose sand from the flatlands he was traveling through whipped up all around him, flying into the front of the bike and
his face and chest like the grains were bent on annihilation. Stone had to bend his whole body forward to keep from being
blown over. He pulled some goggles he had around his neck over his eyes and that helped a little, at least protecting them
from the dust which bit into his unprotected neck and face like little slivers of glass.