Last Ranger (23 page)

Yet he still heard the dwarf woman’s knife, the screams and gurglings of the Dwarf. After another ten seconds there was no
more sound. Stone sat up and checked his leg. It was bleeding good, but the bullet didn’t seem to have penetrated any arteries.
He tied a tourniquet around the top of the leg with a piece of material from a dead tech’s shirt. He was able to walk, limping
along. Excaliber jumped from behind the table where he had taken up refuge and trotted warily alongside Stone, snarling and
showing all his teeth as the two of them approached the overturned wheelchair.

Stone could see a big puddle of blood spreading out from beneath. He reached over and pulled the wheelchair back with some
difficulty, as it weighed a ton. But suddenly it dislodged and fell over on its back. Stone gasped. Both of them were dead.
Elizabeth’s hands were still clutched around the knife which was sunk to the hilt into the Dwarf’s chest. She had split the
whole back of her head open in the fall, slamming into the side of the steel table. It was cracked like an egg with most of
her brains already on the floor around her. Yet she looked happy, almost serene with a smile on her now cooling face. She
had done it, she had killed the death freak that no man had been able to kill. And there was a great satisfaction, even unto
death, for that accomplishment.

Stone reached over in spite of himself, and touched the Dwarf to make sure he was dead. The little eggman had escaped death
seemingly miraculously in the past. Stone realized he had almost begun to believe the little fucker was immortal. But he was
dead all right this time. There was no mistaking it, not with his ribs cut open and his heart and lungs all slashed to pieces.
Not with most of him spreading down onto the floor like cheap peanut butter dripping from the edge of the jar. The eyes were
open staring straight ahead. And they looked afraid. A look Stone had never seen on the Dwarf before. Elizabeth had even managed
to coax that emotion from him at the very end. She had done more than she had realized.

Stone hobbled down the aisle as fast as his wounded leg could carry him, firing at the panels, blowing up everything he saw.
He looked up at the displays of the missiles’ video system from space as the computers kept showing their angles and trajectories
for firing down at Earth. It looked bad—but he didn’t know how to interpret it for sure. Stone looked at a clock on the wall
as he reached the end of the aisle, leaving everything smoking and blowing up behind him. There was one minute left before
bye-bye time if the biker chicks’ bombs went off. And somehow he thought they would. He glanced around the command level searching
for a way out, an elevator. Suddenly he saw a red sign with the letters “Emergency Rocket Escape” on a wall.

“Come on, dog,” Stone screamed at the pit bull, which had jumped up on a table and was starting to gulp down a left-behind
sandwich.

“Oh Christ,” Stone said with disgust. “Eating even as armageddon approaches. Let’s move, dog,” he bellowed as he hobbled for
all he was worth toward the rocket sign. The pit bull gulped the fake ham and swiss on rye down in a single gulp and reached
Stone in three quick leaps. Stone saw a glass window like a fire alarm in the old days. “Break In Case of Emergency.” He reached
out with the butt of his SMG and slammed at the glass, then pushed the broken pieces away and pressed a large red button that
sat ominously inside.

The steel door on the wall slid open and Stone stepped a little nervously into the telephone-booth-sized room as the dog slithered
in between his legs and sat down disgruntled about having to get into such a small space again, as that was all it seemed
to be doing lately, crawling into its own coffin.

“Hold onto the grips at your side,” a mechanical sounding voice spoke over a speaker hidden above his head. “Ejection time
ten seconds.”

“Hold on to your fur, dog,” Stone screamed down as he felt the whole thing start vibrating like it was thinking of erupting.
“We’re about to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island and the bomb blast at Hiroshima all rolled into one.”

S
TONE felt the rocket system ignite beneath him as the steel-walled cylindrical booth trembled as if in an earthquake. He felt
the heat and then the jarring rush of super acceleration as he hit four g’s in one second. And suddenly he found himself being
squeezed down and hardly able to breathe. The rocket shot up a steel tube with a tail of smoke rushing behind. Stone thought
his ears as well as his chest would burst. The pressure was tremendous. And even as they rose the rocket seemed to fire harder,
accelerating as it climbed. Stone felt like he was being crushed. His head fell onto his chest and pressed hard against it.
He saw Excaliber on the floor of the rocket booth, flattened like a rug, his mouth wide open and huffing for air.

They then burst free of the ground and there was a sudden great change of pressure as Stone felt his ears pop. They rose for
about four more seconds and Stone could see through a crack in the side, damaged when they rose, that they were up about five
hundred feet above the ground. Below he could see the ruins, the wreckage above ground stretching off for miles. There was
a second small explosion above and Stone felt the whole escape shell jerk hard as a parachute billowed up overhead.

The instant the parachute snapped open the pressure was released on his lungs and he could breathe again. Excaliber as well
took in a long breath and then let out with a pissed-off yowl. Even as he went to take in a second breath of sweet oxygen
Stone saw the ground below him turn yellow and orange. The very earth seemed to be rent asunder as flames rocketed out from
numerous fissures in the ground. It was as if a volcano were being born as gas and fire shot up everywhere, creating multiple
chasms in the earth from the pressure of the explosions below.

“Oh God no,” Stone whispered as he felt the surge of heat from the flames. But even as he thought he had bought it and his
blood drained from his cheeks he felt the chute lift them and then they were being buffeted around in the air. Suddenly they
were being bounced inside the booth like someone shaking dice in a cup, spinning around in the air as the heat currents sent
the chute all over the place. They rose to about seven hundred feet and then shot fast toward the south. Then they were coming
down again, only it was too fast. Stone looked through a crack in the metal ceiling—the chute was aflame above them. The ground
loomed up brown and filled with shattered concrete and then even as Stone knew they were coming in much too fast, they hit.
And he fell into peaceful darkness.

“Martin, Martin, please wake up.” It was April and she was calling him. He was in heaven. His mother and father were standing
there. And she was with them too and they were all smiling. But Stone wasn’t sure he wanted to embrace them as the flesh was
falling from their faces and blood oozed from their reaching hands. No he didn’t want to, didn’t want to—

“Martin, it’s April. Open your eyes—you’re alive.” Stone opened his eyes slowly and saw faces above him. They weren’t his
parents. April and Raspberry were looking down at him with concern. His head ached like it was on fire. Everything burned.

“What—what—” he stuttered as he rose to a sitting position. The escape booth he had ridden in lay shattered all around them.
God only knew how he had survived the fall. The dog, needless to say, was up and about sniffing the air, searching for food
scents and waiting for Chow Boy to get his act together.

“The chute was pushed a few hundred feet,” Raspberry said as she brightened, seeing that he was actually alive. “But it caught
on fire. We were on a hill and saw you come out. Figured it was the Dwarf and came cruising to take him into never-never land.
But—it’s you.” Stone stood up, on very wobbly legs. The bleeding on his tourniqueted leg had slowed to a medium ooze. He needed
emergency repairs, maybe a full overhaul and about a year of R&R. None of which were too likely.

Suddenly he remembered. How could he forget? The Dwarf had pushed all the damn buttons on the missile command. His eyes lifted
to the sky. It was late afternoon and the heavens were slate gray like it was going to rain forever once it began. He couldn’t
see any traces of missile flame, or glint of incoming nose cone. But then there might not have been time—yet. It had only
been ten, maybe fifteen minutes since—

“We better get the hell out of here,” Raspberry said, hopping up on her bike. “Come on, Stone. There could be more secondaries
from below. This whole area could go up.” Flames were shooting from several square acres now as the ground ripped to pieces
and disappeared into burning fissures. Below he could see the crumbled levels, all fallen together like a deck of steel cards.
Everything within was being churned in the flaming walls of moving steel and concrete, ground up into powder that glowed red-hot.
Nothing could have survived below. Not even a germ.

“No, you go,” Stone said. “Me and my sister will stay and see what happens. I’m tired of running. If the end is coming, I
want to be standing looking it in the face like a man. It sounds crazy; I won’t even begin to deny it, but—”

“I hear you, Stone,” Raspberry said. “Well, there’s a couple of gassed up bikes over there. Some of the girls didn’t make
it. A lot of them didn’t. Still, we set out what we wanted to accomplish.”

“I owe you,” Stone said, looking over the eight Ballbus-ters who had lived through the attack, a third of their original number.
“And my sister, as well. Neither of us would be alive—but for you. And if the world has the slightest chance of surviving
it will be because of all of you. We’ll know damned soon enough.” He raised his eyes again to the skies thinking he saw a
shape and feeling his heart speed up. But it was just a flock of birds flying fast and low like they wanted to get the hell
out of there themselves.

“Hope we get to fuck again some day,” Raspberry smirked, throwing her blond hair back and sliding on her steel helmet. “Adios
amigo,” She turned the accelerator of her Harley and the bikers tore off after her, bouncing over the wreckage as they followed
in v-formation behind their Queen.

Stone stood up, pain ripping through his body. He supported himself for a moment on April’s shoulder. Their eyes met and she
seemed clearer now, if still very tired, hardly able to move or talk. But her eyes, they were definitely clearer.

“Thanks,” she said, leaning over and kissing him on the cheek. “If we’re to die, I can stand it if it’s here and now —with
you. We can join Mom and Dad, and—” Though the words were sad and made Stone feel like bursting into tears, her face was strong,
eyes unafraid of the coming night. Stone wasn’t sure he was quite as unafraid. But it was true—at least they were together.
His long search was over. He put his arm around her shoulder and they stood there staring at the skies, as the dog relieved
itself on a jagged piece of concrete tilted sideways as big as the side of a house. Stone gazed up into the gathering clouds
like a madman searching for sanity. And he waited and prayed and winced at every little shape that seemed to form up along
the churning cloud line.

*    *    *

The earth was turned into a glowing powder that spread out through the solar system, blown by the atomic winds. In the orbit
where the noble planet, third from the sun— and considered by many to be the most beautiful of the star system—had spun for
billions of years, was now only a cloud of luminous dust and rocks that sparkled like murderous diamonds in the heavens, a
beacon, a lighthouse signal to the rest of the universe for all time to come that an intelligent species had made all the
wrong choices.

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…

Stone heads south, through an electrical firestorm with his gravely wounded pit Bull, Excaliber, strapped to the back his
bike. With the help of a lesbian bike gang, the Balbusters, Stone makes it to Amarillo—where he’s plunged into an underground
fortress. Here a colony of corrupt government officials, mutant geniuses, sex slaves—and The Dwarf—high-tech War Board and
a network of weapons and drugs. Stone’s sister April, the Last Ranger is to reed to battle denly. Stone is out of moves He
fears no one in a fight. But this is a game with the highest stakes of all—and mankind’s future at the fingertips of madmen!

Martin Stone is

THE LAST RANGER

America’s Last Hope in America’s Darkest Age