The Rabid Brigadier (6 page)

“Sorry sir,” the corporal replied in the same monotone.

“You guys are really talkative. I haven’t had such a stimulating conversation since my dog howled last night.”

“Sorry sir,” the soldier started to reply and then cut himself off as he realized what Stone had said. He looked away, embarrassed,
but didn’t utter another word.

Stone shut up. He sat on the hard wooden benches that ran along the inside of the truck and stared out the back. As the military
convoy headed downriver they passed the waterfalls from which Stone had escaped by the hair on his balls. For the first time
he saw what had awaited him and the pitbull. The water dropped a good hundred feet onto a maze of boulders below, where it
exploded in a violent spray that rose into the air. Nothing could survive that drop. Nothing. He would have been crushed into
something that would have made good soup starter and that’s about it. And suddenly even his loquacious companions seemed better
company than the waiting jaws of the fish, snakes and snapping turtles.

CHAPTER
Six

T
HEY HAD driven for about three hours in silence, Excaliber asleep at his feet, when Stone began feeling strange. Very strange.
He thought at first it might be the bouncing, seesawing motion of the truck, for its suspension was clearly not in the greatest
shape, but then waves of sharp pain swept through his hand, the one that had been bitten by the ear taker. Stone held it up
to the dim light of dawn edging down through the open back of the truck and took in a sharp breath. The bite wound was swollen
nearly an inch high and the entire back of his hand had started turning an extremely ugly dark purple. He pressed in on the
flesh and it seemed to stay indented like a piece of rotten fruit, not springing back at all. Stone rolled up his sleeve to
the elbow and again breathed in sharply. Bright red streaks ran side by side all the way up the inside of his forearm.

Suddenly he felt dizzy, the world spinning around him, as if he’d chugged a gallon of vodka. He tried to speak to the
guards but heard nothing coming out, just his lips opening and closing and his mouth dry as sand, without a drop of spit.
He stood up, feeling as if he were suddenly suffocating and lurched toward the two men, his legs feeling as if they were made
of lead. The soldiers glanced up at him from out of their semi-dozes with startled eyes and swung their rifles around, clicking
off the safetys.

“I-I,” Stone could hear himself stuttering as he headed toward them an inch at a time like an old cripple hardly able to walk.
Then it was as if all his blood drained from his body at one instant and poured out his feet and he felt so cold that he thought
he would freeze to death in seconds. He saw the floor of the truck coming up at his face like a fist and felt a sharp blow
as if he had been struck by a sledgehammer. Then everything went from black to gray and black again.

Somewhere were voices and faces that looked like demons, and hands, so many hands, touching him, moving him. Stone had the
sense of motion, as if he were being carried, and broken images of the world—a mouth here, an eye there, peering down at him,
just inches away—the sky flashing overhead, brilliant with pearl clouds dancing to his rapidly beating heart. But it was all
confused, insane, as if he were watching a movie that had jumped its sprockets and the images were nonsensical, without real
understanding. The worse thing was how far away he felt. Though his senses still perceived things, albeit in a distorted way,
his mind felt like it was on another planet. He couldn’t understand, comprehend anything. And somewhere inside of him, Martin
Stone knew that death was very near, a dark brooding presence that circled around him, trying to pull him in, trying to draw
him into its black fires.

Then he was in a tent or something and there were bright,
blinding lights burning into his eyes and needles piercing his skin. But he felt none of it, felt only a strange tingling
sensation along his thigh and hip and up to his heart, like a little river of fire burning its way through his veins and arteries.
Then there was darkness and terrible dreams.

He was in the ground. Under the soil. Sealed in below the hard unbearable pressing weight of the earth that covered him for
many feet overhead. He knew he was dead. He couldn’t quite remember how he had died, but nevertheless he was dead. And they
had buried him. Except for one thing—he was still alive. Somehow. His mind knew where, who, what he was. There was no movement
or warmth in his pale cold body but he knew that he was. Only he wasn’t. He was dead. The living dead
.

There were other dead things around him. He could sense their static but still-existing consciousness beating out in impotent
fury. For they were all trapped here forever. This was Hell. Worse than Hell. He couldn’t take it, to be trapped here, buried
for ten billion years until the very universe came to an end. He had to live. Had to. Stone made the body come to life. He
filled its cold fingers with warmth and made the leathery arms move. The corpse thing clawed at the dirt a grain at a time.
His mouth and shriveled eyes were filled with the cold soil, crushing, grinding into him
.

Still he clawed. Clawed and scratched with every bit of energy that lived in the soul of Martin Stone. And he created a hole
in the dark dirt and pulled it down. His hand broke free above the ground and he could see a blue light that burned like a
star. And his fingers clawed through until at last his skeletal shrunken head broke above the surface. The light filled his
black eyes with glare so intense he was blinded. Something was roaring, a wind roaring through the worm-riddled holes that
were his ears
.

“Mister, mister. You awake or what? Your signs read that you’re coming out of alpha rhythm into waking pattern. Mister, if
you can hear me, open your eyes.”

Suddenly Stone felt reattached to his own flesh. As if he wasn’t a million miles away, but in it. And it was warm and he could
taste the oxygen filling his lungs like the sweetest perfume. He was alive. He opened his eyes and looked up into a pair of
crystal-blue eyes with a face of an angel built around them. The face smiled and bent so close Stone could smell the presence
of her female flesh.

“Where am I? What’s happened to me? Last thing I remember I was in the truck.” Stone sat up, suddenly alarmed. “My dog, where—”

“Relax,” the young blonde woman said, and Stone noticed that her eyes weren’t one color but seemed to ripple from blue to
green to gray like a rainbow. She pushed him back down with a soft hand. “Your dog’s fine, you’re in the NAA Hospital in Grand
Junction, Colorado. As to what happened. You almost died, mister. Came this close,” she said, holding her fingers just a fraction
of an inch apart. “That bite you got on your hand—from whatever romantic entanglement you were involved in—had set in a number
of different infections. But basically you had blood poisoning. The germs spread up the veins and the arteries, heading toward
your heart. The doctor said, two or three more hours—and forget it. We pumped so much antibiotics, penicillin and every other
goddamned thing we could find in this place into your blood we probably drowned whatever what was hungry in there.”

“I see,” Stone said, smiling slightly through a not unpleasant haze. He liked the way she cursed, the way she moved, everything
about her. If there was a reason to live, it was standing right in front of him.

“You’re lucky, mister. Damned lucky. Fifty years ago, you would have been dead. But even with every drug known to man shot
into you you’ve still been in pretty much of a coma for about two-and-a-half days. We didn’t know if you were going to make
it or not. But about six this morning your brain activity increased markedly and—”

“How do you know so much about my brain activity?” Stone asked with a grin.

“We’ve got all kinds of heavy duty medical equipment here. Two operating rooms, and all this gear too.” She pointed across
the room and Stone’s eyes followed to see computers, readout graphs, beeping lines that squiggled and wavered like electronic
snakes.

“What is
all this
anyway?” Stone asked, motioning with his head in a circle to sort of include everything. “What is the NAA. I don’t know anything
about the whole setup as I wasn’t given a bit of information from the moment I was rescued.”

“You’re lucky they didn’t kill you,” the woman said. Stone noticed for the first time she was wearing a nurse’s uniform, starched
and white and tight-fitting in all the right places. He looked her up and down appreciatively. “They sometimes make sweeps
of certain areas where there’s been a lot of trouble and just level everything. The New American Army, that’s who we are.
You’re at the main headquarters of the NAA here in Grand Junction, although there are several other outposts that have been
established, I’m not sure where. They don’t tell us a lot about what’s going on.”

“But what is it that you do exactly?” Stone asked. “I mean, army for who? For what?”

“For ridding America of the bandits and murderers and warlords who control everything. For pulling the U.S. back from the
very edge of a barbarism that will make the Dark Ages seem like an afternoon brunch. You’ve seen what it’s
like out there. We’re going to reestablish the United States, unite her again, rid her of the lice and vermin who are out
there.” Stone had a strange sensation as he listened to her. For the words were something he agreed with wholeheartedly, but
the way she said them—her eyes wide and almost blank, her voice rising—it was almost as if she were in some kind of stupor,
or trance.

“How many are there of you? Who runs the show? I noticed, before I passed out, that everyone had ranks like the old army.”

“There must be about three hundred at this camp,” she said, adjusting his pillow as he began feeling very tired again. “More
at other places. General Patton runs everything. He is the Supreme Commander. He was able to keep control of a small army
unit that was in charge of a munitions depot. After America collapsed he came out and has been fighting his way around this
part of the country, gathering men. Fighting the enemy wherever he exists. The general is a brilliant man. You can see for
yourself.” She moved her hands around the antiseptically clean recovery room. “This hospital here, as primitive as it might
be compared to the old days, is probably one of the most modern and well equipped in the country right now. The general is
not just a master of strategy, but of organization, of gathering and distributing military supplies to all his units. Of keeping
things working, and keeping men under control. All of us are volunteers, and proud to serve in the NAA.”

“What’s your name?” Stone asked suddenly, feeling more tired by the second and wanting to know who she was so he could call
up her memory in his sleep, so he could dream of her to get strength.

“I’m Nurse Williamson,” she said, smiling a little nervously
and looking down. “And you, we couldn’t find any ID on you anywhere?”

“Didn’t see the point, to tell you the truth, Nurse Williamson,” Stone said, liking the way the syllables of her name slid
off his tongue like velvet. “I mean there’s not too many traffic cops giving out tickets anymore. My name’s Stone, Martin
Stone,” he answered and suddenly his lips would hardly move.

“Martin, that’s a nice name,” he barely heard her whisper. Then she was injecting him with something and he felt himself falling
into a pit again. But this time a pit of sleep—not of death.

CHAPTER
Seven

T
HE NEXT time he woke up, Stone thought perhaps he might actually make it. His body felt fully his again. It was as if he had
reasserted, by sheer force of will, his being into all of his cells. Everything still hurt like a motherfucker. He felt like
he had been on the biggest drunk of his life. He lifted his hand and looked at it. It was black and blue, with an almost luminous
sheen to it as if the skin had been pressed very tight. It must have swollen up tremendously, but now it was almost flat again,
just felt like it had been under a ten-ton press for a year or two. He looked up and down his arms but the red streaks were
all gone. He remembered for a second his corpse dream—had it been real? He prayed not. If that was what death really was…
he shuddered. Well, it proved one thing, Stone thought. He had always pretended, at least to himself, that he didn’t give
a shit whether he lived or died. But now that
he had seen death, he wanted to live. He did give a shit. He would fight to his last sputtering breath not to go.

Stone took a deep breath, realizing it was time to get his life in gear again—if not actually zooming, at least hobbling along.
He sat up, spun around in the bed and stood up. The white walls of the room undulated around him as if he were in a carnival
funhouse, but within seconds his head cleared and he started toward the door. He felt a sudden pain in his right arm and stopped
short.

“Shit,” he cursed as he saw that he had forgotten about the IV unit pumping white liquid into the vein inside his elbow. He
reached over and closing his eyes pulled the needle out, letting it fall and dangle at the end of the rubber feed tube. It
hurt. He glanced around and grabbed a swab of cotton from a desk next to the bed and a roll of tape and quickly and crudely
wrapped the lightly bleeding hole up. He had to get moving. He started across the floor.

“Ah, Mr. Martin Stone,” a female said, opening the buffed aluminum door. “I see you’re up and about and”—her eyes ran quickly
up and down his body—“I presume looking for your clothes.” Stone glanced down suddenly and realized he was stark naked. He
felt suddenly embarrassed, vulnerable, his feet on the cold floor, in front of her. Nurse Williamson didn’t pull her eyes
away, but just kept staring at him, just below his belly button. A thin smile jogged back and forth across her mouth.

“Not bad,” she said, stopping in her tracks and crossing her arms. “Not bad at all.”