Last Ranger (22 page)

“Come on, dog,” Stone hissed as he moved forward low. “Keep your teeth sharp.” But the dog didn’t need any advice in that
direction as its jaws kept opening and closing instinctively, ready to sink into anything that moved. Stone tore down the
main corridor, trying to visualize the map the dwarf woman had given him, doubtless now back with his clothes which had been
scalpeled from him in Dr. Kerhau-sen’s medical room. He should have stopped and picked the damned thing up. That was stupid.
But everything had been moving so fast. He sure as hell wasn’t strolling back now.

He came to the end of the corridor and the thing split, one going right, one left. He stood for a moment trying to decide
but Excaliber suddenly barked several times and headed toward the left, turning around as if to see what was taking Chow Boy
so fucking long. Couldn’t he smell that the Dwarf was just ahead? Couldn’t he sense the foul odor of the ugly thing, the scent
that oozed from its stumps?

“You know where you’re going, dog, so let’s go.” The animal started forward as if on a track meet, glad to see that the Chow
Boy had at least a little common sense, if a fatal lack of smarts. Stone ran, hardly able to keep up with the panting beast,
which seemed to know exactly where it was heading. The corridor was nearly two hundred feet long, and by the time they reached
the metal door at the end they had picked up some pretty good speed. Excaliber was not one for knocking—or even using the
handle—he flew into it with such force that the whole thing shook slightly. The animal fell back on its back dazed, its legs
quivering in the air like an overturned turtle.

Stone knew a better way to get in. He reached out and slammed the seven digit code number into the keypad built in the steel
door, the code that the dwarf woman had given him, she being the only one that the Dwarf trusted to clean his pad. A mistake
he was about to pay for dearly. The door slid open just as the pitbull got groggily to its feet, wondering dimly if it had
been such a good idea after all to charge into the steel door. Maybe next time—

Stone was already inside as the animal pondered. He rushed several steps inside the huge chamber that stretched off ahead
and his eyes stopped like they’d been frozen with Magic Glue as he stared toward the right side of the room. For there, tied
down naked to a bed with her legs spread apart was his sister. The Dwarf had rigged up some insane kind of contraption right
above her, a whining pulley system with levers and straps and all kinds of madness which had been built into a steel frame
erected over the bed. It was easy to see just what the little slime had in mind: to deflower April by lowering himself mechanically
from the top. He was stabbing away with one of his arm stumps at a set of dials to his right and the entire rig was lowering
his miniature twisted naked body right down on top of the dazed, drugged woman.

“Jesus, mother of God,” Stone muttered under his breath, so repulsed by the sight that he stood totally frozen for the sheerest
second paralyzed with horror. The Dwarf was only inches from making his consummation real.

“Dwwaaaarrrrffff!” Stone screamed out with every bit of rage that burned within him. The yellow eggman’s eyes suddenly darted
up as he saw his mortal enemy.

“You bastard, you’re dead. You must be dead. You can’t ruin everything,” he shrieked like a rusty hinge, slamming even harder
at the controls of the pulley system to go down so that he could impregnante her with his freak child.

“Noooooooo!” Stone screamed as he rushed forward, not daring to fire as he might easily hit April as well. “Noooooooo!” The
Dwarf suddenly realized he was’t going to make it—and in the choice between producing the heir to his throne or saving his
own wretched life, the Dwarf without hesitation chose the latter. He pressed another button on the panel, cursing under his
breath as he gave Stone a look of sheerest hatred.

“You die now!” he hissed. “We all die!” Suddenly he was rocketed over onto his side, the whole pulley contraption turning
and depositing him right into his wheelchair, which sat next to the bed. In a flash he was stabbing away with both stumps
at the twin machine guns built into the arm rests on each side. A stream of white hot slugs peppered the room. But both Stone
and Wonderdog had already hit the dirt.

“You’ve brought this on the world, Martin Stone,” the Dwarf screamed. “A hundred missiles will rain down on the planet Earth.
What is the sound of total annhiliation, Stone?” he laughed, and even as Stone rose up to sight the zooming chair up with
his SMG, a surface of the wall opened and in a flash the Dwarf was through it as it ripped shut behind him.

“Oh God no,” Stone whispered, his face drained of blood as he rose to his feet. He walked quickly back to April and looked
down at her. She was in a total daze, even more drugged out than she’d been the night before at the banquet. Stone saw barely
a trace of light in her eyes. But as he kept looking down into her sweat-coated face he saw her lips move almost imperceptibly.

“Martin, Martin, thank God,” she whispered as soft as a dove’s wings fluttering.

“C
OME on, baby,” Stone said as he freed her and then found some clothes so she could cover herself. She seemed to be coming
out of it just a little, at least she seemed to recognize Stone as she just kept whispering “Martin, Martin, Martin,” over
and over again like some sort of prayer to protect her against all the horror that she’d undergone.

“It’s okay now,” Stone lied to her as he put shoes on her limp feet. “You’re safe, April, it’s all over.” The dog kept sniffing
at the insane pulley contraption over the bed and suddenly snapped at it hard, taking a dislike to the machinery involved.
It took only a few rips for the pit bull to pull the whole side of the thing apart, as joints bent with a squeaking sound
and suddenly the whole thing toppled over and hit the floor with a thundering crash. April’s eyes jerked up wildly at the
sound. But Stone stroked her as a small smile crossed over his face. At least the dog had awakened her.

Suddenly he heard what sounded like engines and two of the Ballbusters came screeching through the opened door he had just
come through.

“Stone, it’s you,” one of them shouted, and Stone realized it was Raspberry. It was hard to tell at first as blood was streaming
down the whole side of her face. Still, she was riding her bike and talking, so it couldn’t be too bad. “I was just making
a final sweep for any of my girls. We’re getting out of here man. The place is going to blow in sixteen minutes. You need
a ride?”

“No, not yet,” Stone said. “I’ve got to try to stop the Dwarf—he’s headed for the missile room to launch the whole fucking
sky full of Star Wars missiles down on the Earth—down on this place. Take April, though. Get her out of here, then all of
you just get away fast. I’ll—do my best. If I don’t make it out could—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Raspberry replied, looking him in the eye. “She’ll be taken care of, I promise you.”

“Thanks,” he said wearily and then turned down the corridor as the biker queen got April on the back of her Harley and pulled
the girl’s arms around her waist.

“Hold on sugar, we’re going for a ride like you’ve never been on.”

“Martin, Martin,” April just kept moaning but held on firmly as the bike screamed out its gasoline roar and headed back out
of the Dwarf’s chambers. Stone knew there was one final level below this—the missile command center. The map had indicated
fire stairs at the far side of this level. He ran over more oozing dead bodies—the work of the biker chicks. They didn’t take
any prisoners. And three dead Ballbusters were mixed in with the carnage.

Stone hit the fire stairs on the run, spraying a burst inside the doorway. But no one was on the other side. Above him he
could hear the motorcycles as the Ballbusters were driving right up the stairs as they had come down. With the dog at his
heels Stone edged down the two flights to the final level. The steel door that had stood at the entrance was blown right off
its hinges—and two more Ballbusters lay around their twisted bikes, blood coating everything like a squeezed jelly donut.
They’d tried to get in down here—and hadn’t.

“Dog, it’s kiss your ass goodbye time, you understand pal,” Stone said, whispering to the dog as he checked his SMG. A final
clip and one in the 9mm and that was it. “’Cause we got to go in there, whatever’s happening. It’s been fun,” Stone said,
reaching down and giving a quick scratch behind the animal’s ear. The dog looked up with a strained expression as if to say—please
Chow Boy, emotion is for peacetime—it’s fighting time now. They charged down the stairs leaping over the bikes and the dead
and tore through the charred frame.

There were greenshirts waiting, a good dozen of them hidden around the floor. But they weren’t quite ready for action, thinking
that the roar of the bikers’ engines meant that the enemy were splitting. And that was their last mistake. For Stone came
in firing from both hands before they could even react. It was like
Bad Day at Black Rock
and
Gunfight at the OK Corral
all rolled into one, with slugs flying everywhere into greenshirts. The pit bull ran hugging the wall, then flew up on a shirt
starting to get a bead on Stone, and slashed the side of his face down to the bone. When they had both passed not one guard
was left untouched.

Just beyond was the main computer center—the brain of the entire missile defense system. Stone’s jaw hung open as he came
tearing in. The place was as big as two football fields and absolutely filled to overflow with beeping and blinking radar
and computers, monitors and readouts, rows of screens showing the view of the Earth from the missiles’ point of view in space,
twenty-thousand miles above the Earth. It all could be seen displayed out in acres of command post equipment. This must have
been the center of the entire space fleet, Stone realized. And the Dwarf had control of it. Surely the gods had gone mad.

He ran down the huge complex firing at everything, including technicians at various posts. And his slugs rocked them from
their seats. Anyone who was trying to blow up the world was fair game in Stone’s book and he didn’t hesitate to blow every
bastard he could see right out of his chair. Bullets tore into the screens and control panels as Stone left a smoking sparking
trail behind him and small fires which broke out here in there in the circuitries. Exca-liber took up shotgun and keeping
an eye on anything that moved, taking out a pistol hand that reached from a shadow. The hand still gripping the gun fell to
the floor. The pit bull didn’t look back.

Suddenly Stone saw him ahead—the Dwarf, racing down a row of control panels in his wheelchair, punching out with his stumps
at rows of buttons and dials with an absolutely maniacal expression on his face. Stone prayed it wasn’t already too late,
that this wasn’t the final launch sequence that Dwarf was punching in right now. He ran down the central aisle of the place
firing, holding the trigger and letting loose with a barrage. The Dwarf heard the cracks and turned his wheelchair on a dime,
both of the twin machine guns on the armrests opening up. They came right at each other, two men, one representing the darkness,
the other the light, snarling with hate, guns blazing. Then Stone took a hit as a slug tore right through his left thigh.
He went down in a tumble of hands and legs and slammed hard into the side of a table, letting out a quick scream from the
intense pain. Excaliber dove behind an immense blinking computer as a dozen slugs ripped into the steel floor just behind
him, leaving gouged-out, smoking little craters.

The Dwarf laughed shrilly and came forward from about fifty feet off, his guns continuing to smoke as two rows of slugs raced
toward Stone’s prone body. “Die Stone, die!” the Dwarf screamed, wanting more than anything to take out this bastard who had
ruined his wedding night. The bullets were inches from Stone when a shape hurtled down from one of the cross beams that were
built all over the place holding lights, racks, screens. This was a human shape falling—the dwarf woman, Elizabeth. And she
was holding an immense butcher knife stolen from the kitchen, used to hack up whole cows.

She slammed into the Dwarf, landing on his lap just as the wheelchair came beneath her.

“You!” the Dwarf hissed in real amazement that he had been betrayed by one so lowly, such a slave of no meaning as the woman
who raised her muscular arms high.

“Me!” she laughed back, slamming the sixteen inch blade deep into his scrawny chest. “Me—the dwarf bitch. The worm, the cockroach
of NAUASC. Me, Dwarf. And who is the powerful one now?” She stabbed again and then again and again with furious rage, no longer
impotent. The dwarf’s whole upper body was carved right from the bones like a badly butchered piece of meat, everything hanging
down, bones shattered and all. He lost control of the wheelchair as he let loose with a long shrill scream that made the hair
on the back of Stone’s neck stand on end. Then the wheelchair crashed into a steel wall.