The Cutthroat Cannibals (24 page)

Stone fumbled agonizingly slowly with the feed belt, slamming it into place, pulling off the safety. Thank God he had practiced
with the major back in the firing range of the bunker, with just such a .50 cal. His father had stocked the place with only
the best. Because if Stone had been even a second slower he would have been a dead man. He slammed the lead bullet into the
chamber, resting the feed belt over his shoulder as a whole group of the neanderthals came charging straight toward the jeep
waving clubs and assorted sharp implements. He prayed and pulled the trigger.

The muzzle of the mint-condition weapon erupted with a roar of fire, and a load of slugs the size of small birds tore ass
out of the steel barrel. The first dozen or so cro-mags were less than ten feet away and coming at Stone like charging rhinos
when the bullets slammed into them. The slugs, meant to take out armored vehicles, planes, a small tank or two, ripped into
the bodies like a wolf into carrion, shredded the attackers, sending flesh flying into the air in a bloody snow all around
the jeep. He whipped the gun all the way to the right, where a large contingent were coming at him like a whole mountain slope
full of gorillas, only these gorillas were armed with shovels, picks, and sledgehammers.

Stone pulled hard, feeling the heat of the .50-cal. as it burped out white-hot lead and the whole jeep shook beneath his feet.
The subhumans fell beneath the withering fire like so many pick-up sticks being tossed to the ground. They had never seen
a machine gun, or couldn’t remember from their past lives as human beings what the hell the things were. It was impossible
that a single man, Stone, could stop their hordes. And so they kept coming, dying en masse, not even realizing what it was
that was doing them in.

Stone heard growling from the back side of the jeep and realized with horror that the half-humans were sneaking all the way
around. There was no way in hell he could swing the big .50-cal. around in time. And then as if in answer to unspoken prayers
the pit bull jumped from the driver’s seat where he had been guarding things and took out two faces, snapping back and forth
in the air like a windshield wiper of slashing teeth. Stone prayed the dog could hold back the ranks and concentrated his
energy on the ones from the camp. They just seemed to come from everywhere, out of holes in the ground, out of their human-skinned
tents. Stone sprayed them down, glancing nervously at the box of ammo at his feet. There wasn’t a hell of a lot. Maybe hidden
under the floor of the jeep? But Stone didn’t have time to look for ammo. If he stopped firing for even a few seconds the
still advancing masses, waving weapons and screaming like a zooful of enraged animals charging from the bloody mists, would
inundate him.

Suddenly Stone saw the two albino brothers being pushed down a slope toward the jeep. They were each holding a pair of 9-mm
semiauto pistols and were firing like mad as their teams of savages pushed behind, running as fast as their thick muscular
legs could push the great loads. Within seconds the wheelbarrows built up speed and came hurtling down at Stone like two battlewagons.
The obese albinos fired away with each hand pulling the triggers relentlessly from their sluglike positions back in the barrows.

Stone let a dark grin spread across his face as he whipped the muzzle of the .50-cal. around and got the lead wheelbarrow
dead in his sights.

“This is for all the poor bastards you ate,” Stone screamed out, though no one heard above the din of the firing and the screaming
masses. But they heard the bullets rip into the barrow and tear it into smoking fragments that flew in into air. They heard
it in the screams of Top as his fat flesh was torn into chili, exploding out in a torrent of blood that instantly filled the
big wheelbarrow and overflowed onto the ground and beneath the driving legs of the pushers behind.

Stone’s smoking barrel found the other wheelbarrow as well and its inhabitant. “I’m sure you want to be with your brother,
don’t you, slime?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled and kept his finger on the trigger in a madness of battle.
The slugs tore into the albino and his transport, transforming them into a mixed smoking red mush that flew into the air as
bullet after bullet stirred it around. Within seconds there was nothing left that was recognizable of the two. They had been
transmuted into the same kind of indecipherable hamburger that they had turned Charise’s brother into. There was some justice,
if little, in that.

After he saw that there wasn’t a bit left of the two brothers to fire at, Stone let his finger ease up on the trigger, thinking
he should conserve some ammo. There was a sudden eerie silence as the whole battlefield stopped in its tracks and everyone
checked to see just what the situation was. The cro-mags realized with both horror and joy that their albino masters were
dead. And the fight went right out of them. The brothers were dead. There was no reason to fight anymore. And like the animals
that they were, they broke ranks and ran in wild packs into the forests, howling and screaming at the moon, with the strange
and exultory realization that they were free.

“H
ERE, help me load your father onto the jeep,” Stone said, as he pulled up at the aged shawled man, who had gotten only one
foot up onto the back and then sort of become stuck. He didn’t remember how to do things too well anymore.

“Sorry,” Charise said with an embarrassed look as she pushed up at her father’s backside, forcing him to move forward into
the back of the jeep from which Stone had shot down half the fucking town. He guided the blank-faced man to a built-in steel
seat on the side and wrapped the blanket tighter around his shoulders and lap as it was a cold morning, the air thick with
a frosty mist that bit into the skin, the lungs.

“Come on, let’s split,” Stone said, sliding into the driver’s seat. He checked gauges for the fifth time that morning. But
everything was okay, filled to the brim. They had prepared well before leaving on their journey to Canada. They just hadn’t
been able to prepare for fate. Charise jumped up onto the seat beside him and managed as much of a smile as she could on this
cold, hard morning. Stone reached out and touched her face.

“Things will be okay,” he lied with as much sincerity as he could muster.

“Sure,” she lied back. But that was all there was these days. Just a forced smile, a word or two of total untruth. At least
it held the spirit from slipping the last inch or two into dark madness.

Stone glanced over at the grave they had dug for Roger, her brother. There hadn’t been a hell of a lot to work with. But they
had managed to construct a sort of coffin from wood and buried the remains with all the proper prayers and rituals they could
think of. They didn’t bury anyone else. Not that any but the dead were there to stand wake. The rest of the subhumans had
fled, never to return presumably. Only the willpower of the albino brothers had held the whole place together. Without them
there was nothing. Just the rotting carcasses of the dead and the twins’ own sluglike bodies, which formed a large oily sludge
in the very middle of the camp, a spot Stone couldn’t even look at.

He started the jeep and it purred to life instantly, thank God for small favors. But then they owed them upstairs after what
they had just put them all through.

“Come on, dog,” he yelled, then whistled hard through chattering teeth, tightening his own jacket against the chill wind of
the morning.

The pit bull appeared from out of the bushes that led to the river. It had a flopping trout held tightly in its jaw. The animal
trotted forward, jumping over the bodies, leaping across mounds of half molded flesh. He reached the jeep and in a single
fluid motion jumped up onto on the back of it and walked over to the old man. The dog dropped the fish at the dazed man’s
feet and then put his paws up his lap and snorted happily.

“I think the mutt likes him,” Stone laughed as he turned back around and started the vehicle forward. It moved with a few
lurches as he got used to the pedals and the steering, then they eased bumpily forward, riding over rocks and mounds. Charise
pointed toward the left in the direction of the road they had been traveling when they were attacked. At last Stone was leaving
the river valley. For the first time—in how many days?—he would be out of the claustrophobic claws of the place that he had
to endure from the moment the avalanche had kicked his ass.

Still, things sucked, to say the least. All his equipment, everything had been lost in the fall into the river. And his sister,
April, Jesus God, what was happening to her? He had been on his way to find her when—It seemed that the more he tried to rescue
her from the hell she had tumbled into the further he found himself from her. As if he were on a treadmill that just pushed
him backwards.

And yet Stone knew he had not the slightest choice. If he spent the rest of his life searching for her, if he ended up wounded,
crawling, his very life’s blood spurting out of him as if painting a highway line, still he would go on. For she was all that
remained of his family. And Stone knew that without even the possibility of finding her, it would be hard to keep his own
damned engines going in this dark, dark world.

He would drive north with the girl, until they got near the bunker, then she’d have to be on her own. For now. Maybe someday
there would be room for love. But not on this cold morning. It wouldn’t be far to the border. She’d make it. And Stone figured
it probably
would
be better up there. It damned well couldn’t be any worse.

He would have to rebuild everything from scratch. He knew there was a motorcycle frame back in the hidden mountain retreat,
even some extra wheels and welding equipment. The major had planned for every eventuality. Christ, he could tie some fucking
smg’s onto the bars with wire if it came down to it. It didn’t have to look as pretty as his first bike did. Just kill as
good. Because God knew there was enough killing to do on the bloody road to save his sister. And anyone who got in his way
was going to find themself floating down a red river.

Stone heard laughter and turned around as his foot eased up off the petal for a moment. Charise was laughing and pointing.

“Oh look, Dad is smiling. Your dog is like a psychiatrist for him. See, he’s getting better already.” And Stone had to grin
along with her, for the dog, its front legs up on the old man’s lap, had pushed its face right up to the shellshocked seventy-eight-year-old’s
face and was licking his cheeks with long wet strokes. First one cheek, then the other. And even her father couldn’t stay
within his terrified shell with that treatment. He reached up and half tried to push the animal away. Then he laughed. Out
of the pale white near-dead face a laugh somehow emerged. And then another as the dumb dog just wouldn’t stop licking his
face. As if it knew the old man needed healing. And even the tiniest bit of love from a dog might do the trick. And then they
were all laughing as the jeep pulled out of the campsite. Laughing almost hysterically and the dog joined in too, howling
and growling at the crazy skies. And it was a strange sight indeed, not that anyone was watching, to see them laughing so
as they left behind a battlefield of dead who were not laughing at all.

A THIRD WORLD WAR HAS LEFT AMERICA A LAWLESS AND BATTERED LAND. BUT AMID THE PILLAGE AND HEARTLESS KILLINGS, ONE BRAVE YOUNG MAN HAS BECOME AMERICA’S LAST HOPE FOR JUSTICE AND FREEDOM. . .

Martin Stone’s on his way to a mob empire stronghold to rescue his captive sister. The avalanche and flood, wild warriors, and wild dogs that slow him down and almost kill him are hell. What he runs up against next is hell with the heat turned all the way up.

They’re not the Red Cross. They may not be altogether human. They’re The Hungry – and their taste runs to the skin and muscle of real men and women. Next on their victim list are Martin Stone, the Last Ranger, and a beautiful young virgin eager to live and to love. Against this tribe of fanatical flesh eaters, Stone has a small but potent arsenal – his bare hands, his naked wits, and Excaliber, Killer pitbull and one desperate defender of the Last Ranger.

Martin Stone is

THE LAST RANGER

America’s Last Hope in America’s Darkest Age