Last Ranger (16 page)

Keeping Stone all tied up with no place to go, so that he had to watch every revolting bit of it, Kerhausen had his whole
operating team assemble around the two figures next to him lying on the wide table. They were both hooked up to all sorts
of support systems, breathing, life monitoring, anesthetic tubes. And then the operation. It wasn’t pretty. Whole breasts
sliced right off like they were the sides of a turkey at Thanksgiving dinner. And then sewn onto the chest of the man. Then
all of the women’s other sexual characteristics were transferred. Breasts, hips, and even her sexual organs were cut out and
sewn into a space made in the man alongside his own sexual apparatus. Everything was squeezed in tight. It was insane. It
was impossible. But it was happening right before Martin Stone’s wincing eyes. The first man-made hermaphrodite. And what
a bloody mess it was.

W
HEN Stone awoke he came punching and kicking right out of his dreams, where he was smiting the bastards left and right. But
when his eyes opened with a start to his own frantic failings, Stone saw that he was back in his metal-walled cell and wasn’t
smiting anyone. He heard a sound from a corner of the room and was startled for a moment until he remembered that Excaliber
was back among the living. And looking his usual early morning hungry as shit and pissed off as hell.

“Dog,” Stone said in a whisper, as the mere sight of the animal made him feel a strange kind of secret joy. He had been so
sure the pit bull wasn’t going to make it that now he had to admit that he really did care for the little fucker. As wild
as the dog was, he was more loyal, and intelligent as well, than most of the homo sapiens Stone had been bumping into. Pitiful
comment on the human race—but true nonetheless.

“Come here you little shitkicker.” Stone grinned and the animal came bounding across the floor with unbridled energy. It hit
Stone square on the shoulder as it jumped up with a little too much enthusiasm. Stone went flying over backwards with the
dog’s stinking paws all over his face and chest.

“Jesus, animal!” Stone shouted, pushing the dog off of him and rolling to the side. “You make feeling sentimental a combat
action.” The dog came charging forward again, tongue hanging out like it was scraping the concrete floor for insects. Stone
stood up fast. Excaliber wasn’t a dog you could pet sitting down. Suddenly there was a sound from one of the seamless walls
and a door slid open. Two greenshirt guards walked in and stood side by side with nasty looking pump 12-gauge Brownings trained
on Stone and the dog. Excaliber started to growl, as he never had liked the sight of anything metal pointed at his face.

“Easy dog, just take it fucking easy,” Stone motioned the animal, and it slinked off back to its corner again where it sat
down and kept two pissed-off looking eyes pasted on the guards.

“Stand back,” one of the greenshirts said, motioning Stone to move. “Feeding time.” Suddenly right between them a small misshapen
woman walked in carrying a large box on a strap over one shoulder. It was clearly heavy and she stumbled into the room nearly
tripping. Stone started forward to help her but the guards lowered their death-dealers with sudden movement. Stone just looked
at them with disgust and helped the dwarf woman take the box from her shoulder and put it down. She looked Stone right in
the eyes with a puzzled expression. She was old and very ugly, like her face had been cut up for a dissection class and rearranged
several times; her body too. Yet somehow within her pain-filled eyes Stone saw thanks. He smiled at her.

“Food,” she said, kneeling down and opening the metal box. “For you and the dog.” At the word “food” and the sudden scents
wafting out of the box Excaliber was up in a flash and toward the chow case. Stone had to grab him to keep him from knocking
over the woman. When it came to food, nothing dared stand in the way of the animal and its culinary destination, be they cripples,
old women, or both.

“Slow down, dog,” Stone shouted, grabbing it by the ears and pulling it backwards. “All things comes to those who wait.”

“Thank you,” the woman said, looking up at Stone with some surprise. Apparently she wasn’t used to too many folks extending
even the slightest courtesy to her. Stone could see that when the guards, yelled out for the old hag to hurry up, as they
had other mouths to feed. She opened the box and took out two large steaming bowls filled with stew and placed them down.
Then a gallon jug of water, and some fruit.

“The Dwarf said to feed them well,” she said, looking around at the guards who seemed to be a little bit suspicious of such
good eats as the other prisoners didn’t get nearly so much. She winked at Stone, pushing the things forward. “Meals are twice
a day. Does your dog have any special requirements?” she asked. She looked around again at the guards, this time sneering
at them, so her teeth showed, and Stone saw that there was quite a nasty creature dwelling inside that wretched body who would
strike back when pushed to the limit. “Dwarf said to feed the dog too,” she spat at them. “They have to be strong for the
Games.” The two guards grumbled.

“Well just hurry up, ugly dwarf bitch,” one said. “We haven’t got all day.” She handed Stone the water jug and then closed
the box and put the strap back over her right shoulder. Stone helped her get the weight up; once she was moving forward it
didn’t seem too bad. Again she gave him a look of silent thanks and then she and the guards were gone, and the door slid noiselessly
closed so Stone was sealed in again as if into his own coffin.

The pit bull was slobbering up a storm around the bowl like there was no tomorrow. Splattered food reached as far across as
the far wall and Stone had to retreat to one corner and sit on the floor. The food was good. Really good. The best chow he’d
had since the Sunday nights in the bunker. That was when his mother used to cook them all kinds of good things from the frozen
vaults that his father had filled with thousands of pounds of frozen meats and vegetables. Five years they had been in there
and they hadn’t used it all up. But Stone had to admit, eating fresh food was far preferable. The stored food had been getting
a kind of stale taste in it, like it was turning to dust, which it all was.

Absolutely nothing happened for the next two days, other than the dwarf woman’s reappearance with food twice a day. Other
than that Stone tried to keep active by running around the cell, doing jumping jacks, pushups, stretching, shadow boxing.
The dog ran with him, and though there wasn’t a hell of a lot of room, the two were able to get in a decent amount of exercise.
Stone knew he had to keep at the peak of his reflexes, or as close to it as he could muster. Whatever these bastards had in
store for him with their Games—he wanted to be ready—for. He wasn’t too optimistic about either his chances or April’s. But
the thought of the Dwarf marrying her—and her bearing his children—was so hideous and repulsive an idea to Stone, that every
time he even thought of it, it made his whole stomach feel like he had just swallowed a gallon of sour milk. And he thought
of it a lot.

Mid-afternoon of his third day enclosed in the steel cage, the door opened unexpectedly between feedings. Stone, who had been
standing on his head in a yoga position for upper neck and shoulder relaxation, was so startled that he fell over onto his
side, which got Excaliber all stirred up and growling so that the whole place was in its usual chaotic state.

“Shhhh!” the dwarf woman said as she hobbled through the door and aimed a small transmitter at it from the inside so it closed
quickly behind her.

“I want to help you,” she said as she came to the center of the cell, limping on one foot. Stone saw that she was virtually
crippled in every part of her body. It was as if every single joint had been bent out of its proper angle and alignment, every
tendon twisted. Stone knew who did work like that. She stopped just before him and smiled as Excaliber relaxed, seeing it
was the Chow Lady. He came up to her and rubbed his nose into her hip in a gesture of supreme friendliness. The animal rarely
did that to anyone but Stone.

“He likes you,” Stone said with a grin.

“There isn’t much time,” she said, her voice trembling with pain as Stone realized that all those terrible woundings of her
body didn’t just look peculiar, they hurt like hell. “The Dwarf—you know he is planning to have you compete in the Games.
They start tomorrow. You have less than twenty-four hours before—” She hardly seemed able to continue.

“What?” Stone asked “What are the Games like?”

“I have seen other men compete,” she said with sobs catching in her throat, as she had obviously seen many people come and
go down here. “But none came out alive. The Dwarf sets humans against beasts they have no chance of defeating. Against lions,
and immense alligators. He has units of troops out constantly scouring the territory for hundreds of miles just trying to
get monstrous creatures who will rip and tear men in different ways. I don’t know just what he has planned for you. But it
will be terrible, I can promise you that.”

“What—what happened to you?” Stone asked, hesitant to delve into such a personal subject. Yet he couldn’t help it, for her
mutilations looked inflicted by men, not nature.

“I… I…” she stuttered, hardly able to talk.

“Easy,” Stone said, “you’re among friends.” The dog snorted and pressed his nose deeper against her hipbone as she scratched
the furred head.

“They took me—and—destroyed me,” she said, tears starting to form at the edges of her eyes. “Dr. Kerhausen used me as one
of his first experimental subjects when he arrived here. I was a secretary once for the Under Secretary of the Air Force.
When the war came, we were all placed down here. There were hundreds of us—at first. But something went wrong. Many died,
became mutated, burned. There were gases and radioactivity. I don’t know. The ten are all that are left of the original bunch.
And they are freaks like me. Freaks. They stamp the image of themselves on all that they touch. They wish to make the world
diseased and ugly. Dr. Kerhausen ripped me apart, sawed my very bones from my body and then reshaped them. In the name of
science, he said, over and over again, as I screamed and begged for mercy. Science has no mercy, he would answer over and
over again. It cannot. The individual must be sacrificed so that society can survive.”

“Jesus,” Stone said, looking down at her with horrified eyes. He knew that as bad as he might ever feel, what with his mother
and father dying and all, there were others, like her, who had undergone far, far worse.

“I don’t know how I survived. Most don’t and they are discarded, or ground up and used for nutrient solution in the hydroponic
sector. Nothing goes to waste down here,” she said bitterly. “But I did live and Kerhausen let me live, because he wanted
to see what would happen to me as the years went on—what would happen to the twisted bones, the rewired nerves. And gradually
they let me wait on them and trusted me enough to serve them food and clean their toilets. And I have waited, Mr. Stone. Waited
until I knew I could hurt them, could get them back in some way. And that moment has come. I want—to help you, however I can.
I want to kill them all. What they’ve done to your sister—it’s horrible. Drugged her, and the blasphemous wedding dress—degrading
every sacred institution of the old world. They had me cleaning in her room—I saw her.”

“You know where she is?” Stone asked excitedly, suddenly realizing that the dwarf woman could be his ticket out of here. She
could change the odds from impossible to just a million to one.

“I know where everything is,” she said, letting her lips curl back over her teeth, which Stone saw were filed down by the
mad doctor for some reason. They were sharp and looked like they could hurt when she finally cracked and leaped at one of
their necks like a wild rabid beast. “I’ve become just a thing to them. A Quasimodo who carries buckets and food, who fetches
shoes and cleans and mops the halls. You don’t know how long I have waited for this day,” she said with a most determined
expression on her wizened, burnt little face.

“What’s your name?” Stone asked softly.

“My name?” She looked confused. “I haven’t used it for so long—they never call me by my name.” She had to think for a few
seconds and then a smile crossed her face, a strong real smile for the first time since Stone had seen her. “Elizabeth,” she
said. “Elizabeth Hopkins.”

“And a nice name it is,” Stone said, holding out his hand. “I don’t think we were ever formally introduced. Martin Stone,
and—”

“And Excaliber,” she said quickly. “I know all about you two. As I said I can go everywhere—even into the Dwarf’s private
information files. I’m like a flea beneath contempt or notice. I’ve read the dossiers on many people who have passed through
here. Yours was one of the largest. He hates you, Stone. Hates you more than anything in this world. He truly believes that
when you’re dead there will be nothing left that can stand in his way to total domination. And with you gone, and the Tribunal’s
control of the space missile systems, they’ll—”