Last Ranger (5 page)

There was a thunderous flapping of wings that totally unnerved Stone. When he swung his head around not slowing an inch he
saw every feathery son-of-a-bitching one of them rising up en masse. They were not exactly graceful birds and slammed and
bumped into each other all over the place, actually knocking each other out in some cases so that limp wings spiraled down
to the ground where they lay broken. But the rest, several hundred of them, rose up about eighty feet, circling the bull a
few times just to get their bearings, and then took chase after one Martin Stone.

Stone couldn’t believe it as he kept glancing over his shoulder, and the flock kept growing closer by the second. They were
clearly coming after him, doubtless already salivating or drooling whatever juices flowed in a vulture’s beak. Stone swung
the autopistol back over his shoulder without even looking, just gauging the angle of fire, and pulled. He held the trigger
until the clip was emptied, and then snapped a quick look around. A whole slew of them were plummeting down and a few were
also dropping behind to eat them. But in general it hadn’t done a hell of a lot of good. In fact, unless Stone’s -eyes were
deceiving him, more seemed to be joining in the chase as the entire circle of vultures which had been flying far above like
a beacon to other carrion eaters throughout the state also started dropping fast. Oh, he’d definitely caught their attention.

Like an oasis in the middle of a desert Stone saw a thicket of low trees ahead and a sort of pathway leading into them. It
looked passable, for him anyway. He leaned forward on the bike and tore into it, slowing the Harley as soon as he hit the
path to make sure he could effect passage. He could. Stone heard a fluttering right above the tree canopy. Some of the foolhardy
creatures were landing on the interwoven branches above. They were obviously intent on getting to him, no ifs, ands or buts
about it, though just what it was that made him so fucking attractive to them was a question Stone was burning to know. Maybe
it was the dog lying on the back. He looked dead. Maybe it was as if he were toying with them, dangling a mouse in front of
a cat and then running with it. Well, these suckers had gone for the bait.

Stone debated staying inside the thicket but after a few seconds of listening to their frantic attempts to break down and
through the branches he decided against it. He started ahead switching on the lights to navigate through the shadows of the
mini-jungle of trees and bush. The pathway that appeared man-made extended right through the thicket. Stone found a comfortable
speed and moved along at about twenty, his boots digging down in the black soil. He no longer heard the flutterings and the
smashings of beaks and talons against wood, and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d lost them. That was the one saving grace about
vultures—they were stupid.

After about five minutes Stone saw light ahead and suddenly broke through a few vines dangling down over his face, slicing
along his chin. He was out into the dimness of the end of day. Only as he emerged he saw that something was blotting out the
sinking sun ahead. And as he adjusted to the light Stone saw that the sky ahead was filled with an army of them, a single
immense circle which turned with thousands upon thousands of birds. As thick and as awe-inspiring as the very rings of Saturn,
only this ring was of leathery hide and dark feathers. And it was after him.

The circle that hovered about five hundred feet above the terrain began dropping the moment he emerged from the grove. Stone
knew it was too late to even try to turn around and get back. They’d be on him before he was halfway there. He could only
move ahead. He slammed his finger on the firing button of the 50-cal mounted on the front of the bike, swiveling it so it
was arched up at a forty-five degree angle pointing straight into the descending flock. Then he pushed hard and held the button
down as the barrel burped out a fusillade of thick finger-sized slugs. The whole bottom part of the descending horde seemed
to disintegrate before his eyes, as hundreds of the crank-necked buzzards flopped to the ground wings broken, heads hanging
limply to one side.

They retreated momentarily, swooping up and then turned far around, taking almost a mile to do so. But then they started back
again, this time gaining speed from far off. It was as if they were going to come down on him with the sheer kinetic motion
of their bodies, let him try to shoot them down or not as he wished. Stone gulped hard. The 50-cal wasn’t going to do it.
They were ready to die—or didn’t know the meaning of it.

Suddenly he remembered the Luchaire. He had attached this one as opposed to the first launcher he had had, which had been
lost along with his Harley Electraglide in an avalanche. This one had a swivel mount so it could be pulled out and fired on
the move. Now was as good as any for a try. Stone pulled his leg up and out of the way and unhitched the firing tube. There
was no time for careful calculation, but he quickly tilted it up directly toward the center of the sky armada. There was time
for only one shot, he had to stop to reload—and that didn’t seem too likely.

Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
The words tore through his mind like an advertising ditty. Only these suckers didn’t have whites in their eyes—besides, they
were already too close; Stone could see the crooked beaks snapping in the air, the cold predatory eyes beaming in on him,
preparing to make contact the hard way. He lifted his leg back so he was riding at a peculiar angle and pulled the trigger.
The whole bike shook with a roar as the missile shot out the tube, and a blue flame exhaust, the heat of which Stone could
feel like a blast furnace, shot past him on the side of the seat.

But it was the missile end that was the thing to look out for. And the vultures didn’t have a chance. The 89mm shell set to
detonate at the lightest contact ripped through the first few ranks of the garbage birds about a hundred yards away and went
in a good two hundred feet before it found something hard enough to go off of. And it went with an immense explosion which
Stone wasn’t quite prepared for, nearly knocking the bike over on its side. The force of the blast tore out in every direction
into the vultures, absolutely ripping them to shreds. It was like a chicken butchering factory run by anarchists, for the
vultures were sliced up into all sorts of odd configurations, few of them marketable. Wings, beaks, claws all went shooting
off in every direction as the whole sky filled with feathers and a mist of blood that colored the high clouds scarlet.

Stone withstood the initial shock blast and pulled his goggles down as he tore on straight ahead and into the mess. The blood
mist was dropping now and the feathers too so that there was a storm of them. He could hardly see and had to slow down to
almost nothing before he at last emerged on the other side and was clear of the falling storm of fluffy red soaked feathers.

There were no more of them waiting for him. It didn’t make him feel great to see so much bloodshed, so many butchered vultures.
But what went around came around, and these buzzards had learned the hard way. Stone drove on just as other flocks of them
began circling again. But this time their attention was zeroed in on their dead brethren below. It made the other isolated
bits of carrion as much as there was like a mere snack compared to the acres of pulverized and homogenized bird flesh. Within
minutes of his departure from the killing ground Stone could see the new cloud forming above the serve-yourself vulture meat
market like some vast swirling asteroid belt of brown bodies. And as he drove over a rise and didn’t look back again, the
blood flock dropped down like a curtain descending.

A
young woman stood naked on a pedestal. The pedestal, electronically controlled, was revolving as greedy eyes took in the nubile
lithe form, untouched, un-scarred and untwisted by life, unlike those faces that stared at it.

“Beautiful, so beautiful,” the Dwarf said from his wheelchair as he tried to rise up on his stumps to his full height like
a bird trying to present its plumage. Only he didn’t have any plumage to present.

“Yes,” other voices spoke from around the stainless steel floor. They stared hard at her perfect beauty contrasting so starkly
with their own physical abnormalities. The dozen people in the room, the Dwarf’s personal staff, were also freaks—three men
who were badly burned, other dwarfs, a man with no flesh, only pulsing muscle visible to all the world. These were the Dwarf’s
own, the ones he felt comfortable with within his private twenty thousand square foot chamber deep in the NAUASC underground
quarters.

“She shall look so beautiful for the wedding,” a female midget with a face twisted up like a Mack truck had run over it a
few times, said from one side of the slowly turning woman. She was hardly more than in her late teens and her eyes weren’t
really focused on anything. But her mouth was set in terror as if her face knew she was scared shit-less, even though her
brain was numbed out by several drugs that the Dwarf had injected into her.

“Yes, the wedding,” other voices repeated beneath the overly bright lights of the chamber.

“Oh thank you all for your compliments,” the Dwarf said, bowing from side to side from his wheelchair. “For I too am delighted
by my imminent wedding. And by the beauty of my blushing bride.” Blushing was hardly the word for it. The girl’s face was
flushed like she’d been in the sun all day long from the drugs she was on, a side effect of the mind-altering chemicals.

“Now we must complete the bridal gown design,” the female dwarf said, squealing as she hopped around on the floor reaching
out to touch the naked girl, whose hands were over her pubic area, shy even in a state of near mind-lessness.

“Yes, begin the fitting,” the Dwarf squealed in a high-pitched voice, and the place erupted in merriment. Materials and scissors
were brought out and all kinds of fitting and cutting of fabrics went on for an hour as the Dwarf looked on with a most contented
smile across his pushed-in face. At last the white satin dress and trim were all tucked into place with pins and needles and
the girl’s hair was pulled back and done up into the style the Dwarf liked— one he had chosen after looking through a number
of old bridal magazines. It was his first and only marriage. He wanted things to go—so nicely. And for his bride to look her
most beautiful.

“Yes, yes, it is excellent,” the Dwarf laughed, slamming his stumps against one another so they thwacked together with fleshy
sounds right in front of his face. “And now the rose, the black rose—bring it out.” A three-armed man walked solemnly out
holding a golden tray. With one hand holding the tray, and one raising the cover, the third hand lifted a black rose and reached
out and pinned it to April’s shoulder. It was black as midnight, black as oil that had slept in the very center of the earth.
It looked, to the Dwarf’s and the rest of the assemblage’s eyes anyway, so lovely against the virgin white of the bridal gown.

“Yes, she is a picture of my divine dream,” Dwarf said softly. For the Dwarf had had a dream years before of his bride-to-be.
The woman who would someday bear his children to carry on with the empire that he was creating. A son who would rule the world.
And she would be the mother of the thing, of the monster that the Dwarf knew would surely emerge.

“Come to me my lovely,” he said, sitting back in the wheelchair, as a dark smile flickered back and forth across his mouth.
She was led slowly over by two elephant-faced twins to the Dwarf until she stood just a few inches away and was level with
the misshapen handless and legless monstrosity standing up on his stumps in the chair. He looked deep into her eyes like he
was searching for something.

“Do not be afraid my child,” the Dwarf said softly. “No harm shall come to you.”

“I am afraid,” she replied so softly it was hard to hear. But he had heard.

“No, no,” the Dwarf laughed. “You will see, my precious. You will be rich and powerful beyond all dreams. Being the wife of
the Dwarf shall make you the most powerful woman on the planet. Together we shall rule, you shall bear my children.” Even
in the midst of her drug-induced half trance, the words seemed to do something to April, for she looked like she was going
to puke suddenly and her face turned as white as a freshly laundered sheet.

“Your—children?” she whispered. “Oh my God.” Her mouth opened to scream but instead she just sort of wobbled around in place
like she was thinking of going into the land of Nod from the sheer thought.

“Come to me my precious,” the Dwarf said again, spreading his stumps for her to approach. “Come to me.” He stared deep into
her eyes and she was unable to pull her gaze away. She was in a deep fog, as if on the bottom of the ocean and everything
was black all around her. Only his eyes seemed real. They told her what to do.

“Yes, that’s it, bring your face to me,” the Dwarf commanded soothingly. “Now kiss me. Kiss these lips.” He pursed his lips
and the gold capped teeth within shone in the center of the egg-shaped face. She brought her face closer to the little hideousness
but she felt her guts rising up at every fraction of an inch. Then her lips were against his and he moved his gold teeth against
her so they felt cold. And then a thin reptilian tongue, squirming like a worm and cold, unearthly cold, slid into her mouth
and seemed to try to wrap around her tongue.