Last Ranger (8 page)

The four cars spread out about fifty feet apart and came in on them in a half circle, clearly an attack strategy they had
worked out before, one that doubtless plenty of men had fallen to. But Stone wasn’t up for a shooting match. Not when he had
a mobile bomb at his disposal. He kept the steering wheel aimed right at the dead center of the advancing wolf pack of dilapidated
steel and wood, and suddenly the dead copilot of the truck fell over right in front of the seat, his shattered body lodging
on the pedal. The vehicle suddenly lurched forward, giving Stone barely time enough to pull himself away and avoid the bike
getting tangled up and going down. The car surged, and as he saw its graffiti-covered back tear off he let loose with a continued
barrage from the 50-cal, aiming down below to try to hit something good.

The biker ran past the driverless car, staying out of the way of Stone’s fire. The car kept on like it had a will of its own.
As the four cars focused all their weaponry on the thing for a moment, Stone reached the biker running forward.

“Get on,” he screamed, but the biker didn’t need any encouragement. Stone could hardly see a thing beneath the dark helmet
but the face smiled. Just as the car reached the front ranks of the four cars trying to pass around it, one of Stone’s shots
must have hit something, for suddenly the special delivery let out with a loud crack from underneath and it burst into flames.
The flames moved so fast and intensely that they spread out in a wall on both sides, extending out a good twenty feet. The
nearest two attack vehicles were caught in the blast and their unprotected gas tanks ignited as well. Each went up in violent
blasts of steel and smoking flesh.

“Hang on,” Stone shouted, wheeling the bike around in a 180 so they could just get the hell out of there in case there were
more of the slime.

“I’m hanging,” a voice shouted back from inside the mask. And Stone knew instantly it was a woman. In spite of himself, even
as he accelerated and tore away from the flaming scene, he turned his head for a second to look. Holding onto him with her
left hand the right hand shot up and pulled the visor up on the helmeted head.

“That’s right, I’m a woman—any problems?” a beautiful but tough-as-nails face sneered back from within.

“No, no problems at all,” Stone said softly, and turned forward, not daring to say a word to his backseat passenger, like
the most henpecked of husbands on a Sunday outing.

“S
TOP, I have to take a leak,” the biker woman without a bike said suddenly after they’d gone about five miles and it was clear
that the cars weren’t about to follow. “Fighting always makes me have to pee,” she added by way of explanation. Stone stopped
and she jumped off. He could see the back of the black leather jacket she wore had the words “THE BALLBUSTERS” written in
bright red on it. She walked twenty feet behind a scrub brush. Not that it gave much cover. She squatted down and let out
with a contented sound, then walked back to the bike zipping up her tight jeans. She came up to the bike and gave Stone the
once-over real slow up and down.

“Raspberry Thorn,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her and tilting her head slightly. What with her jacket and studs
on her wrists and long scar that ran across one cheek she looked just a little bit tough. Stone sighed.

“Martin Stone,” he replied, taking his hands off the bars as he saw they were going to have a little conversation. Now that
he thought of it, it seemed like a good idea.

“Why the hell did a tough guy like you go and do an asshole thing and save someone you don’t even know?” she asked looking
at him suspiciously.

“Oh sorry,” Stone replied, “hop on—I’ll take you back there or to wherever there are more of your ‘friends.’”

“Slow down pardner,” Raspberry replied, looking at him through squinted eyes. “Just want to know why. You know what kind of
world we all live in.”

“I helped you because my father—as stupid as it sounds —taught me to live like a man,” Stone replied a little angrily. “And
that includes helping people when you can. You know, all that kind of bullshit.” He glared at her deep blues. Stone wasn’t
used to seeing such natural beauty under such a hard shell. If she smiled he’d be in trouble. She smiled.

“Well thanks then,” Raspberry said, her teeth glistening like pearls. She suddenly seemed incredibly seductive. All her features
softening. And Stone did a double take wondering where this new woman came from. She even looked different. “That was very
brave—and since I’d rather be alive than dead—I’m glad you showed up. Now if you’d be so kind as to take me to my camp—then
that would be very, very civilized of you.”

“How far?” Stone asked skeptically. He had wanted to reach Amarillo tonight. The sooner he got to April, the more possibility
she’d still be alive. God knew what the Dwarf and his sadistic crew were doing to her. They would take out their anger at
Stone on a girl who had never hurt anyone in her life. But
they
know how to hurt. Stone had already felt the sting of their sadism.

“Only about an hour to the west. Pleeeassse,” she said, tilting her head even more, pouting her lips. Stone could see she’d
trained in the art of man manipulation.

“Sorry, sister,” he replied slowly as he would have liked nothing more on this earth than to have taken her up on it and spent
the night tight around those luscious curves, his face pressed into her falling mane of blond hair, which spilled out from
beneath the helmet. “I’ve got to go save someone else—my sister. She’s more important to me than you are, to be brutally honest.
But you can make it back from here in a day. You seem to know your way around. If you travel at night you—”

Suddenly she moved in a flash faster than Stone could react to and was on the backseat behind him, a blade held around his
throat pressed hard against his neck. The knife was sharp, razor sharp, and Stone could feel it digging in already.

“Move, Stone,” she said without anger but firmly, and he knew she would use the blade if she had to. And she knew how to.

“Hey, slow down,” Stone laughed falsely. “I was just about to say—but—I’d be glad to take you anyway.” He reached slowly forward,
gripping the bars as he thought for a moment about trying something. But the angle was bad, the blade was already digging
in so that if he moved it at all it might slice real deep. He’d have to wait.

“Which way?” he asked, easing the bike slowly forward.

“That way,” she said, pointing with her other hand so her fingers were right by his eyes. “Along the hills the way I was heading
when the Jalopios took me down.”

“Jalopios?” Stone asked. “You mean those slugs riding those fucked up trucks and cars back there?”

“Yeah, the Jalopios. They run this whole part of the territory for about fifty miles to the east. Until you get within twenty
or thirty miles of Amarillo. Then the Tribunal takes over. Me and my gang had our run-ins with these Jalopios before. Usually
they don’t come this far west. They’re dumb as shit but somehow they got themselves a whole damned fleet of junk. Though you
managed to give ‘em a nice hurting. Got to congratulate you on that again,” she said, patting Stone on the shoulder. That’s
great, he thought—getting stroked on one side, knifed on the other. When they said women had two faces, they sure as hell
knew what they were talking about.

“You mind if I ask you a few questions, nothing personal?” Stone asked as they drove through the mid-afternoon light of a
gray day.

“Sure, you’re cute, ask away,” she said cheerfully enough, keeping the blade right up against his flesh so that when he went
over bumps in the prairie the edge actually sawed back and forth and dug in even more. He could feel a thin trickle of blood
already oozing down his neck and onto the top of his sweatshirt.

“Who are the Tribunal who rule Amarillo you mentioned?”

“The freaks. You never heard of them? Everyone in Texas fears those bastards. They’re—ruthless. Make the toughest of the gangs
out here in the badlands look like kids fucking around. The Greenshirts—the Tribunal’s enforcement squads—come out sweeping
up people. You never see them again. Just gone. Some say they’re used for terrible experiments, that they cut them up and
sew them together again. Others say they eat them. Who knows.”

“Where are they located?” Stone asked, finding it hard to speak as his throat was a little constricted from being nearly cut
into sandwich makings.

“Well, they don’t want no one to know. But I know, ‘cause me and my sisters we had our own run-ins with these Greenshirts
before. So we spied ‘em out. Found out they got this whole operation underground about ten miles south of Amarillo. An old
missile complex or something. It’s underground. Completely impregnable. Why, we dropped a few petrols down on top of the entrance
grates, which were closed—and we couldn’t even get a decent fire started. Then these automatic machine guns rose up right
out of the ground and started firing at us. There wasn’t even no one manning them, just spraying out a whole shit-load of
slugs and turning back and forth real fast. We got the hell out of there. Always meant to go back and do some real damage.”

“Well I see we’re on the same side,” Stone said with artificial cheerfulness.

“I never said we weren’t on the same side,” she laughed. “Of course we’re on the same side.” Stone didn’t like the sound of
the laugh. There was a mocking quality to it like she knew something he didn’t—and it was pretty damned funny.

“You ever .hear of a young woman named April? April Stone, eighteen years old, no—God—she’s nineteen now,” Stone said, realizing
her birthday had been just weeks before. “Blond hair, blue eyes.”

“Stone, you know how many missing girls there are in this state? More is missing than ain’t missing. Why I was missing when
I was younger. Kidnapped by half a dozen different groups of slimebags until I finally managed to kill the last ol’ bastard
who kept me tied up under his bed and came out here and joined the Ballbusters. We don’t let no one mess with us or we—”

“Yeah, I get the picture,” Stone said quickly, not wanting to get into graphic detail of just what they did to their enemies.
He wondered even harder if he should try something but the woman seemed too good, too strong. He knew somehow she’d killed
before and wouldn’t hesitate, even though she seemed to get along with him in a way. Stone wouldn’t have a chance. It took
about two hours to get to her encampment and the sun was just setting as they arrived at the edge. Stone didn’t see much at
first other than about two dozen cycles parked in a circle, but as they drew closer up to several fires that others of the
gang were standing around, he saw with amazement that they had dug their homes in the earth itself and topped the holes with
windshields from cars, trucks, whatever. He could see the lights of candles and lanterns sending up jaggedly dancing illuminations
from within some of them. They were spread out over the dark field past the two main fires, with car doors well-built right
into the earth that could be swung open and closed. Talk about functional architecture, Stone thought, impressed with the
cleverness of the operation. Just a hole in the ground—some automobile wreckage of which there was plenty around—and presto:
instant all-weather home.

But if the earth homes were unique, Stone’s eyes opened wide when he sighted the bizarre shape that stood between the twin
bonfires. A mound of mud and earth stood nearly fifteen feet high. But more than a mound, a phallus, carved into the shape
of a male organ at full extension. And two more mini-mounds below that stretched out for yards. Around it women were venting
their spleens, slashing at it with knives, spearing it with long staffs, shooting at the head of the thing, which, with its
many holes and pockmarked craters, had obviously been attacked many times like this. What in God’s name had he stumbled into
here? Suddenly Stone’s groin area tightened up like it was going into deep freeze. The whole kit and caboodle knew something
was up. You couldn’t hide a thing from Martin Stone’s body parts, no siree. That was one of the things he really liked about
himself. He was so sensitive.

The mix of hate and desire sent by the flashing eyes of the other women nearly sent Stone toppling off the bike as he brought
it, under Raspberry’s command, to a full stop about twenty feet from the main fire. Seated around the blaze on various car
seats half fallen apart were the leaders of the band. Stone could see that immediately by the garishly painted antennae the
leaders held in their hands like royal scepters, and the fact that all the other women were standing while the three of them
reclined. The trappings of power were obvious in the strangest of places.

“Well look what Ms. Thorn done gone and snagged herself,” one of the seated women spoke up with a nasty laugh. “A man.”

“That’s right a man,” Raspberry snapped back as she stepped off the bike keeping the knife carefully around Stone’s throat
so he had to step slowly off too. “And he’s mine. He saved my ass. The Jalopios were about to get my sweet tail but good,
when this dude showed up on the scene and kicked butt. I mean he sent them into ketchup city, girls. So I want him.”