Last Ranger (12 page)

“Attention, this is an unauthorized area. Repeat—you have entered a No Access Zone,” a tinny voice said over a hidden speaker.
“Get back onto the motorcycle. Do not reach for a weapon or try to escape, or we will fire all the guns at once. You will
be dead in less than a second.” Stone looked around but for the life of him couldn’t see the speaker. He noted the guns turning
slightly in the air, rising, moving, adjusting their sights constantly even as he shifted an inch or two one way or another.
Even if he got off any shots, which was highly doubtful, the things weren’t even human.

“Now, move your motorcycle slowly forward until you’re in the center of the plate,” the voice commanded. Stone followed the
orders. You didn’t have to say “Simon Says” when you had six auto-controlled machine guns aimed at a man’s nose. Once in the
middle of the steel plate, the speaker rumbled again.

“Place your hands on the back of your neck with fingers interlocked.” Stone didn’t hesitate. He didn’t know how much it took
to get these robot guns riled up and he sure as hell didn’t want to do any experimenting. Suddenly the entire steel plate
began descending into the earth as the machine guns leaned over on ball bearing joints and followed him down, just to make
sure there were no last-minute tricks.

A
S Stone descended into the earth he looked up to see a second steel plate slide over the opening and the light above shrink
into a narrow band and then disappear. He wondered if he’d ever see daylight again. He was in a shaftway with countless doors,
which he passed as the elevator dropped smoothly down. There was a dim amber lighting recessed into the shaftway, just enough
to see by. The descent seemed to go on forever and Stone knew what it must be like to be a South African miner and just keep
going down as if there was no bottom. If he was heading into the Survival Complex, they had built the damn thing deep. But
then they had been planning to be able to take a direct nuclear hit so they had to be pretty subterranean—a thousand feet
or more. The craters all over the area, the wreckage above, showed that someone had sure been trying to ice their tails.

Stone felt his ears click three times on the way down and his throat get a strangely dry sensation. He was just debating whether
to come out firing at the bottom like Rambo when the mechanical voice spoke out again.

“Keep your hands up, mister. The stress modes show you’re thinking of trying something. Don’t!” Stone didn’t know how the
hell they were doing it, but clearly they were monitoring everything about him—even his blood pressure. He couldn’t see a
thing, not a camera, wires, anything either on the steel slab or the smooth-sided shaft-way that looked like it had just been
built. Titanium alloy, no doubt. Stone had seen some of the super-hard metal that his father had employed in his munitions
company in various armaments configurations. And that had been before the war. Whoever he was up against was far, far ahead
of anyone topside. Stone felt a chill ripple across the nape of his neck and then back again. For some reason he felt like
a kid all of a sudden, and that he had bit off a little more than he could chew. Suddenly the unit dropped down into a large
chamber and there were bright lights and armed guards who were waiting for him with their SMGs at chest level.

“Hey guys, shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble,” Stone commented as the platform clanked into some kind of locking mechanism
beneath him, and a whoosh of air hissed out, letting the thing settle down until it was level with the concrete floor. Stone
did a quick scan of the place. He’d seen pictures of such. Underground getaways that the government had spent hundreds of
millions, probably billions on. The cavern he was in was a cylindrical shape about forty feet across and Stone could see even
from within the inset elevator shaftway that the subterranean world extended off as far as the eye could see in six directions
via wide connecting tunnels. Stone could see men marching back and forth through them like ants. Jesus Christ, the level of
operation down here was staggering. What the hell were they all doing anyway?

“Stand up,” a voice commanded brusquely, and Stone jerked his head to the right. There were five men all wearing ankle-to-neck
olive green uniforms with all kinds of patches and insignias on their sleeves and chests. They were apparently very image-conscious
down here. All wore plastic glasses, not really sunglasses, but high-tech looking things with narrow slits to let light in.
They covered the fronts of their faces so everything from nose to eyebrows was covered.

Stone rose from the Harley and stepped off and as he got both feet on the ground, turned a tad toward the back of the bike
to see if Excaliber was all right.

“Face front or we fire,” the voice said, not even rising in tone as if it couldn’t care less whether they did fire or not.
All the fingers tightened on their triggers.

“Whoa, easy boys,” Stone said turning quickly around and making sure that they saw his hands were up and away from his weapons.
“I’m not going to try anything—I’m not crazy. I was just going to mention my dog, he’s on the back in a box and—”

“Don’t talk,” the head of the six-man NAUASC team, which their shoulder patches identified them as, said, stepping around
the bike and looking in. “We’ll take care of everything. Now stand, keep hands up.” The head of the unit reached down and
frisked Stone, taking out his two guns, which Stone saw go with a sick feeling. Without his equalizers he didn’t feel too
equal.

“Do you have any other weapons? Tell me now or you will be severely punished later.”

“No,” Stone muttered, wondering what the punishment would be—no supper, no TV for a month. Somehow he figured it was probably
a little worse.

“Come!” the man of few words said as three NAUASC guards fell in on each side of him. They marched him forward down the corridor
and Stone eyed everything, trying to remember the route back to the elevator with precision as his life might depend on it.
He mentally jotted down an odd-shaped black steel doorway that they passed that rose overhead like a Greek column. Then an
incomprehensible wall of chromium tubes that kept revolving. He used his father’s method of keeping track of things—landmarks
in units of threes—easy to learn, and almost impossible to foul up once applied properly.

The deeper they walked down the tunnel the more mystified and nervous Stone became. It was the sheer scale of the place that
was hard to come to grips with. Every corridor they passed stretched off to a distant blur and every one was filled with streaming
dots of humanity. All of them were so purposeful, rushing around, carrying papers, boxes, pushing large computers, machines
on forklifts. What in God’s name were they all doing down here? Confusion more than anything will cause fear. Confusion and
not knowing what the hell’s going on. Stone found his backbone stiffening up with every yard of concrete walked. The dudes
down here were awesomely powerful. He felt like an ant waiting to be squashed beneath a million-ton boot.

“This way,” the head greensuit said, as the little column made a sharp left and headed down another cylindrical tunnel, this
one slightly smaller in width than the main thoroughfare. The place was high-tech enough to make a yuppie, had there been
such a thing anymore, have wet dreams. Recessed lighting in the ceilings sent down an even amber curtain over the tunnel.
Seamless concrete walls reinforced with dull black steel beams were set right outside them every twenty yards or so. And what
got to Stone even more than the Buck Rogers gear itself was the fact that it all worked, every goddamned bit of it. Not a
light out, not a concrete section caving in. And this in a world where most towns didn’t have lightbulbs anymore, let alone
electricity, and where he hadn’t seen a shack that wasn’t caving in.

They walked on another hundred yards or so and then came to an immense steel door that was sealed shut. Two machine gun posts
built right into the wall with only barrels protruding from concrete slits sat on each side of the steel doors. The head of
the unit guarding Stone exchanged some words with whoever was inside one of the machine gun nests and then slid a plastic
card through a steel slot in the wall. After another ten seconds or so, green lights blinked on and off in the walls on each
side of them and then with a whirring sound that made the very cement beneath their feet shake, the immense doors slid open.
They must have been five feet thick and solid as the inside of a mountain. They sure as hell were protecting whatever was
on the other side.

Stone was marched through the doors, which began closing the moment the last man had passed through. The place they were entering
was much larger than anything he’d seen thus far, a square room a good two hundred feet on a side and perhaps twenty feet
high. There were ticking machines, maps lit up like neon lights, all kinds of communications equipment beeping and blinking
like mad. Stone’s eyes darted back and forth trying to make heads or tails of the whole operation. He felt like a monkey in
a cyclotron.

Suddenly he saw ahead, the far end of the room was empty of equipment but for a long black steel bench about twelve feet above
the floor at which ten men sat staring down, waiting for him. It was more subdued lighting at that end and Stone couldn’t
see all that clearly until he was within about fifty feet of them. Then he saw all too clearly. The freaks. The ones he’d
been told about. He couldn’t see their full bodies, just their heads and shoulders—those with shoulders—for all were seated
in their places behind the bench so they were more or less poking up about the same height above the thing. They were hideously
ugly, twisted like they’d been put through meat grinders more than once. And sitting in the middle, his armless egg shape
clearly silhouetted by a greenish light thirty feet behind him on the steel wall—was the Dwarf.

“Thanks so much for coming,” the Dwarf spoke in high-pitched timbre as he looked down from the steel heights.

“Kneel down before the Tribunal,” the head greenshirt standing alongside Stone said, suddenly slamming at the back of his
legs with a truncheon he pulled from a clasp on his side.

“Oh, he’s an old friend,” the Dwarf laughed, “no need for the usual formalities.” The guard pulled back instantly, stopping
a second blow in mid-swing. The rest of the guards stepped a few feet away from Stone, but made it clear that if he tried
anything he was fertilizer. Stone took a quick 180 of the place looking for any exits. He saw nothing, just the same seamless
metal walls and on various high emplacements resting on metal platforms, gunners, cameras, machine guns ready to deal out
a fusillade if the need arose. These guys were better protected than the President had been.

“God, do I wish I’d done you in when I had the chance,” Stone said without malice. To him the little monster was a disease,
it was beyond a personal thing.

“Ah, but you didn’t and therein lies the very fickle path of history. For I am alive—and you—well, for the long run, I must
confess your chances don’t look too good.”

“What are you guys, casting directors?” Stone asked, sweeping his eyes back and forth over the uglies, “looking to get a crew
together for your next monster picture, no doubt.”

“Yes,” the Dwarf squeaked, “we are monsters. In body and soul. What is the darkest thing there is?” he asked, looking down
at Stone through black pinpricks of eyes.

“You Dwarf, no doubt about that,” Stone answered, keeping his arms clasped behind his neck as he saw every guard watching
him close.

“No, Stone, the darkest thing of all is when a man loses the last thing he has, the last thing connecting him to this earth.
And for you Stone, that’s your sister. I’m going to marry her Stone. The lucky woman has been chosen to bear my children.
To be my—queen.”

In spite of himself Stone lost it completely and rushed straight toward the high bench. So many guns were trained on Stone
that the “safety off” clicks could be heard echoing off the steel walls. At the very instant they were about to tighten the
triggers a voice screamed out.

“No! The man who fires will die hard.” The fingers relaxed quickly. They all knew what the Dwarf had done to those who failed
or annoyed him. “He can’t reach us,” the egg-shaped man went on. And it was true. Though Stone made it to the base of the
steel bench, knocking down two of the greenshirts who tried to grab him, he couldn’t begin to reach the freaks. Within seconds,
even as he clawed madly at the hard surface, the guards overpowered him, knocking him to the ground. When he rose thirty seconds
later he had bruises around his face and his hands were tied with nylon behind his back.

“There, feel better?” the Dwarf asked with mock concern. “Get it all out, your little tantrum. Don’t worry, Mr. Stone, you’re
not going to die, at least not right away. I have all kinds of plans for you, oh yes I do. Not the least of which is that
you’re to be my man of honor at the wedding ceremony. I’ve been counting on it.” The Dwarf laughed again, sounding like a
teapot whistle going off. The sound made Stone cringe. He felt sure he was going to lose it all. He wondered what it would
be like to just— crack.