Last Ranger (3 page)

But Stone suddenly had a lot more to worry about than some heavy-duty razor cuts—he saw it, even through the curtains of sand,
coming in from the west. It was huge, a funnel of wind, of black churning energy a good half mile wide. It seemed to extend
high into the cloud line piercing them like some sort of Indian rope trick. And even from a few miles off he could hear the
sound it made above the whistling sand. Stone didn’t like the sound one bit, the grinding and crunching as everything the
tornado passed over was being ripped up and systematically dismantled like it was all made of toothpicks.

He could feel the sheer energy of the thing, like one can sense the power of a great fighter as he walks by. It moved slowly
with a kind of arrogance. The towering black chimney seemed to change direction almost at will as if it were curious about
certain features in the landscape or wanted to go tear up a forest of low trees and send them flying into the air, twisted
trunks and broken branches. And just as Stone thought he might actually get by it through a series of narrow plateaus as the
land dropped lower out of the Colorado highlands descending into northern Texas and the great ranges, the tornado suddenly
shifted right toward him and chugged with the roar of an H-bomb.

It’s an interesting experience having a mile-high funnel of megadeath coming straight at you like it wants to shake your hand—off
your body. And Stone wasn’t all that interested in making the acquaintance with the death spiral. He veered the bike to the
right and floored it, taking his chances that a gust of wind would knock him over. He got the Harley up to about thirty, letting
both booted feet slam down every few seconds to keep balance and sending up clouds of dust along each side of the bike’s trail.
Stone’s very bones felt like they were being shaken inside a blender.

It seemed like it was going to work—at first. Then the tornado veered again as if it had eyes in its dark head and knew what
it wanted. And it came straight toward him.

“Give me a fucking break,” the receiver of unwanted attentions screamed up at the black skies, wondering if the very gods
had it in for him, because it sure as hell seemed that way. He hadn’t said his prayers for quite a while. That was it. “I
pray dear God—save my ass,” Stone screamed into the wind, but not even his own ears could hear above the roar of the approaching
funnel. It was as if he were standing at the edge of the main runway at the largest airport in the world and a thousand jets
were all revving their engines at once. Stone wanted to throw his hands over his ears as the noise hurt his eardrums, made
them feel like they were thinking of snapping like the skins of an old drumhead. But as his fingers were holding the handlebars
of his bike it didn’t seem like the greatest idea.

The entire landscape to his west was now taken up by the swirling funnel, and Stone could see into it now, could see the multicurrents
of inner motion, a thousand complex interactions of wind all buffeting one another and moving in concentric circles within
it. And it was filled, like the vacuum cleaner that it was, with everything it had passed over. Trees, animals, birds, grass,
bush and thousands of tons of dirt all revolved within like the filthy clothes of an entire city in some gigantic washing
machine in the sky. And even as Stone ripped back on the accelerator trying to make a final dash out of harm’s way, he knew
he wasn’t going to make it.

Suddenly it was upon him, and it was as if he were in a dream. The entire bike was lifted into the air as the sheer wall of
blackness closed right over him. There was no sky, no world, no nothing except the spinning end over end, not knowing where
or who he was. He could feel the sheer energy of the thing as he entered its very fabric. He could feel the moisture of the
funnel, the roaring crushing power of its 400 mph-plus winds which swung him around its outer edge. And he could feel as well
the sheer malevolence of the thing, like it had a consciousness and it was to destroy.

Stone saw an entire tree coming toward him like it was playing a game of chicken. At the last possible second the thing suddenly
shot up out of his way as though it had been hooked by a fisherman in the clouds. But something tore into the side of Stone’s
head, for he felt himself stunned and a sharp pain rip through his right temple. He squeezed his hands instinctively around
the bars and wrapped his legs tighter against the sides as he struggled to hang onto consciousness. Now he was going even
faster and he could dimly see the outer world, the trees, the prairie spinning as though he were on a turntable, as things
pulled up from the sundered earth below shot by all around him.

Stone suddenly knew he’d be seeing his mother and father again real soon. Well, that would be nice. He wondered in a strangely
calm way within the storm of his fear just what it would be like to die. And suddenly he wished with a burst of incredible
force that surged through his body right up from the depths of his libido that he could get laid once more before he died.

W
HEN Stone came to he was lying in the middle of what looked like one of the major battles of World War II. Dead, broken, twisted
things lay everywhere. Trees had been ripped from the ground, their roots trailing behind like tendrils dripping green blood.
The animal life had been decimated as if Mother Nature had come to hate all that she had created and wanted to kick some bloody
booty. Fur, legs, grisly blood-soaked things not even recognizable anymore lay strewn everywhere amidst the carnage. Even
the soil itself had not been spared as great chunks of it had been ripped up, the surface of the terrain gouged out in many
spots for yards down, taking all the topsoil, the nutrients away so that the tornado’s legacy would last far beyond the damage
it had created today.

As Stone’s head cleared slightly he suddenly realized he was sitting on dirt. Excaliber? The bike? He turned his head this
way and that and nearly screamed out with pain as he felt that his neck was stiff as a board. Every other part of him wasn’t
doing great, he discovered, as he rose up and immediately fell back down again. His joints, muscles, and one knee all felt
like they had been through a wrestling match with a grizzly. He must have taken some fall from that merry-go-round from hell.
He walked a few steps and nearly stumbled on the crushed head and shoulders of an elk that had been torn raggedly in two.
Stone looked around, reaching down for a branch which he used to support himself and his aching right leg. Then he did a quick
walkabout of the nearby area searching for bike and dog.

The devastation was so intense it was as if an atomic bomb had gone off. The landscape had been made to look almost like the
moon because where the trees had been ripped free of their moorings, huge holes were left, and craters gouged right out of
the soil. It was ugly, as if the earth had been raped. Stone had read about the power of tornados but had never really given
too much credence to it all. How the sheer force, the velocity of the swirling winds could generate such speed and power that
straws could be driven through inch thick metal. He didn’t see that straw —but he did see a branch that had been driven right
into the side of a boulder, about five feet of it was still protruding out at about a forty five degree angle. The leaves
had all been stripped off but it was clear that the rest of the branch had penetrated cleanly inside the granite boulder a
good ten feet in diameter. It looked surreal, like something Picasso might have created on a particularly rambunctious night.
Doubtless it would have brought huge bucks in the SoHo art world. When there had been such things.

Where the hell was the dog? He began fearing the worst —that he might well never see the animal again, alive or dead, or the
Harley. That they’d just been swept off like Dorothy in the
Wizard of Oz
and were now in another state, crushed into a stew of dog and twisted motorcycle parts. He kept trying to wipe the image from
his mind, but just as quickly it kept reasserting itself like a bad dream that wouldn’t go away. Stone began feeling sick
in the very pit of his stomach.

He walked through the rubble for nearly an hour, making wider and wider circles, poking through the debris, the overturned
trees with his stick. Everything was in such shambles it was hard to even see clearly, like a forest that had been turned
on its head, and sprinkled liberally with dirt. At last, his lips grim as pencil lines, his throat tightening up so he could
hardly breathe, Stone sat down against the trunk of a fallen tree and let out a long sigh. It was all gone, the animal was
dead. He threw his head back to look up at the sky, wanting to make contact for a few seconds perhaps, with a God he wasn’t
sure he even believed in. And then he let out a strange sound, a mix of disbelief and joy.

About twenty-five feet up, nestled in one of the trees that hadn’t been taken down, was the bike, and it looked like the box
that the canine had been in was still attached to the back, though he couldn’t see inside it from where he was. A smile spread
across Stone’s face and he felt the pain in his entire body subside to about a tenth of what it had been. It wasn’t total
disaster time yet. Within seconds the smile began fading as he realized the bike was twenty-five feet up in the air, lodged
in the side of a tree like it was planning on building a nest there. Slight problem. No big deal, he’d just call in Rent-A-Crane.

Stone walked over to the ninth wonder of the world and around the base of the tree a few times. It was easy to see why the
tornado hadn’t gotten this baby. It was thick as a sequoia and had branches that you could have constructed a house on. The
sides of the bark were peppered with little dots and Stone looked close, seeing small bits of gravel embedded in them. The
force of the funnel had sent bits of rock shrapnel flying out everywhere. That accounted for the little blood blisters all
along his exposed flesh. He was lucky it hadn’t been worse.

The branches of the tree looked like they formed a kind of handhold path to the bike. The problem was getting up the first
eight feet or so. He found a foothold on a protruding knob and pushed up hard, jumping up with his arms at the same time.
Stone barely caught hold around the next branch and swung there for a few seconds, his hands clawing at the hard, almost reptilian
textured bark. Then realizing he was about to fall backwards he somehow sent out a little extra and scampered aboard the thing,
kicking and grabbing at it like a wildman. Once on, it wasn’t too hard to climb to the next and then up. Within a minute he
was alongside the bike.

He came up to the back box, his heart beating fast, and could hardly bring himself to peer over. For if the dog wasn’t inside,
then…. But he saw fur as he pulled himself slowly up to the level of the black box. The dog was inside. He had strapped the
canine down tightly enough to hold it in one place. At the time it had seemed like he was overdoing the whole thing with double
cables everywhere. But it had unquestionably meant the dog’s life. Stone found a hold along the back of the bike and sat between
the two joining branches. He reached out and stroked the animal’s side, feeling for heartbeat and breath. At first he felt
nothing, but the pit bull was still warm though his lungs weren’t moving as far as he could tell. But as he held his hand
right over the ribcage he felt it, a dim but unwavering beat. Although somebody up there sure as hell seemed to have it in
for Martin Stone, the same party or parties sure as hell seemed to favor the pit bull. If it had nine lives—it had just used
up about half of them.

“Great!” Stone muttered as his mood grew dark again, from a pure hit of relief into a funk within a few seconds. The road
to manic depression. Now he just had to get everybody down. He looked down. It was impossible. Perhaps he could get the dog,
but…. “Shit,” he snapped at himself; he knew he was going to have to try. He climbed up a notch and opened another box alongside
the dog’s. Inside were supplies he had filled the Harley with before leaving the bunker, the retreat, dug into the side of
a mountain that his father, Col. Clayton Stone, had built years before. Thank God he had included ropes in the box. As he
had to spend some time in the mountains recently— and it had been without weapons or ropes—he had over-compensated for this
trip. The cable he’d taken was the best he found in the supply room of the bunker. Half inch wrapped nylon, tested to hold
over a ton. And a pulley system. That wasn’t tested nearly so high. But Stone wasn’t going to worry about that right now.

He got the whole pulley/cable system rigged up, attaching the holding end to a branch about six feet above the bike. He let
the ropes fall to the ground and then swung out on the thing testing it. Strong as a ship cable. Stone lowered himself via
his hand all the way down to the ground, and then hoisted himself back up checking for any snags. But the system, an ultra-expensive
mountain scaling outfit, appeared to work perfectly. Stone undid the entire box that the dog was in and snapped clamps around
the four steel rings on it. Then setting his feet against a branch he let the animal down real slow. The block and tackle
was gear-ra-tioed so that it was fairly easy to handle, the weight feeling like only about twenty or thirty pounds of pressure
on the ropes he was releasing inches at a time. The box hit the ground softly and Stone released his end and again swung down.