Authors: Craig Sargent
Last Ranger
Kiss-Your-Ass-
Goodbye Time…”
“It’s been fun,” Stone said, reaching down and giving a quick scratch behind the animal’s ear. Then they charged down the
stairs, leaping over the bikes and the dead.
Just beyond was the main computer center. Stone’s jaw hung open as he came tearing in. This must have been the center of the
entire space fleet—and the Dwarf had control of it. Surely the gods had gone mad.
Anyone who was trying to blow up the world was fair game in Stone’s book. He ran down the huge complex, firing at everything
including technicians at various posts. His slugs rocked them from their seats. Suddenly Stone saw him ahead—the Dwarf, racing
down a row of control panels in his wheelchair, punching out 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.
He ran down the central aisle of the place, firing, holding the trigger and letting loose with a barrage…
THE LAST RANGER SERIES
The Last Ranger
The Savage Stronghold
The Madman’s Mansion
The Rabid Brigadier
The War Weapons
The Warlord’s Revenge
The Vile Village
The Cutthroat Cannibals
The Damned Disciples
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First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56731-2
Contents
“Dog, It’s Kiss-Your-Ass Goodbye Time…”
One
T
HEY were the the ugliest of men. Freaks of nature, mutilated caricatures of how men should look. Dwarfs with twisted limbs, burned men whose flesh was nothing but bubbles and boils, albinos with pink eyes, skin as white as chalk, and not a hair on their baby-smooth bodies, a man with dark green scales that covered every inch of him, yet another with a grotesque blood-colored tumor six inches long which grew from out of the top of his forehead. And others no less hideous. Yet they were unconcerned
with their ugliness. It meant nothing, less than nothing to abominations such as these. If anything it was a tool for them, for it created fear and confusion in other men and gave the freaks power over them. Power meant all in their world. And in their own dark way, though few even knew of their existence, they were living proof that the brain, the will, are all that
matter. The flesh is secondary. It is the mind that rules men.
They sat on widely varied shapes and sizes of chairs—made of metals, plastics, foam—designed to fit each of their specific
bodily contours. For each was distinctly different in size and shape. The ten freaks formed a circle around a pulsing electronic
map of the U.S. set into the top of the twenty-foot wide oval-shaped table at which they sat. The map blinked and lit up everywhere
as they eyed it with interest, digesting the information it displayed concerning their empire of criminal operations throughout
America. Though an outsider, if he didn’t faint from sheer fear, wouldn’t have been able to discern the slightest sign of
emotion from the misshapen men; they had all met in this central information room enough times over the past years to know
one another intimately. It was known that the twist of the Dwarf’s mouth, the set of the albino’s eye, the coloration of the
red horn-like tumor meant a particular emotional state. Thus they studied each other closely for the slightest clues without
letting on that they were, though all knew that was just what was occurring. They were searching for clues that would help
them gain some advantage in the Game, the Game that they all lived for. The Game of power.
“Gentlemen,” an armless and legless dwarf spoke up in a high-pitched voice that was grating to the others, though none dared
speak a word of protest. “We see before us a great evolution in the Game, a quantum leap, dare I say. For all these lights
flickering before us are ours now. Look you of the Ten. Look and savor our accomplishments.” There was a reverential silence
for a few seconds as they all glanced around at the computerized electronic map which lit up the center of the table with
a brilliant glow. The map was contoured and colored as it actually appeared from space, with mountains that rose up several
inches and rivers that almost appeared by the quality of their tinted plastic to be flowing. But it wasn’t the shapes or colorations
of the multimillion dollar map that caught their eyes, rather it was the vast number of amber lights that outlined their domain.
The amber blinking dots were everywhere on the map. From coast to coast they twinkled like stars of pure wealth, the chickens
that laid the golden eggs. But these golden eggs were ripped from the already savaged populations—and the chickens were drugs,
liquor, and women. The drug dealers and whorehouses that they controlled around America, a vast hidden but intertwined criminal
empire, dwarfed anything the Mafia had ever dreamed of. Though there were blue lights for the Mafia operations, and for the
biker gangs red, along with a smattering of green, yellow, and other lights representing the other major competing murder
inc.’s who were all trying to struggle bloodily to the top. But the Ten were way ahead, far ahead. And the map showed it.
Numbers didn’t lie. And their amber lights were like a galaxy now, absorbing the other colors everywhere around the map.
“As you can see,” the Dwarf squealed, sitting in the highest chair, both to be seen and because, although they were all theoretically
equal in power and vote, the Dwarf was still the power behind the power, officially unacknowledged—but also unchallenged.
“We’ve made a surge forward in the last few months, since our last full Tribunal meeting.” Smiles crossed twisted faces. “Our
holdings have nearly doubled and our drug operations have reached out to create and feed vast numbers of addicts. Life is
hard in the badlands—we help to ease that pain. And we are being richly rewarded for our efforts.”
“It is time. Time to strike now!” the scale-faced man spoke up with a rasping sound as if he had a tongue made of bone instead
of flesh. “Time to claim what is ours by virtue of our strength, our will to power.”
“No, no, not yet!” the Dwarf squealed back, squirming around in his motorized .50-caliber machine gun armed and armored wheelchair
with rows of buttons along each armrest which he could manipulate with the purple stumps of his arms. “We could lose all by
moving too soon. We’re just beginning to truly consolidate our power. Look around the board.” All eyes turned back again and
grew silent as the Dwarf poked at one of the buttons on his panel and the wheelchair began moving around behind them. He spoke
as the chair whirred and though all heads remained focused on the electronic map, their backs rippled with shivers as the
egg-shaped man went by. None of them trusted him worth a damn even though they allowed him to be head of the council of Ten.
But then none of them trusted any of the others worth a damn either. Years of assassinations, poisonings, betrayals and constantly
changing alliances had reduced their original numbers down to these ten. Now a sort of balance of power, balance of terror,
had been achieved.
“Look! Look at the board,” the Dwarf shrieked out. “Yes, we have many lights there. But so do others. Perhaps we are even
the strongest now. But if the rest feel that we pose a threat to take the whole pie—I promise you whatever alliances we have
worked out with them all will tear apart like flesh in a vulture’s beak. We cannot afford to take them all on. To allow a
war to break out now—we would lose—whatever the rest of you believe. Do not be too greedy. Our ten year plan is developing
at an accelerated pace. We will have it all. Never fear. What is the sound of a civilization collapsing?” the Dwarf cackled
as he completed his circumference of the table and came back to his place.
“The snapping teeth of the predators who feed upon her,” he answered his own death riddle. “There is plenty to feast upon
in America. And there is time to do it.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” Scarma, the radiation-burned freak spoke up from his side of the table as all eyes shifted to
him. None, even the foulest of them, enjoyed looking into that molten face with teeth hanging out of his mouth as if on strips
of taffy, nose dripping down around the left cheek, ears melted down to little pinholes around which mounds of lumpy flesh
custard sat. This, plus his total hairlessness and single eye (the other was now the consistency of charcoal and sat like
a dead thing in his face) made even the Dwarf tremble slightly when gazing on the melted features.
“You’re
winning in the Game now, Dwarf. It is to your advantage to have this thing be drawn out. That’s the way your approach works,
Dwarf, slow and deep, like poison administered over years. But we others have our own approaches. I prefer the blitzkrieg
mode. Strike fast, strike hard—before they know what hit them.’
There was a murmuring among them as they looked around trying to gauge clues as to each of the men’s thoughts on this issue
before they committed themselves. They were the most consummate of politicians, most of them ready to change as readily as
the wind changes, depending on their self interest and the prevailing power. The Dwarf was the power now but he knew that
he would be challenged. He had been challenged before though all who had tried were dead. For a man without arms or legs,
weighing less than eighty pounds, the Dwarf was able to inspire fear and dread in the hardest of men.
Suddenly there was a buzz on the intercom units built into the table, and a voice spoke out.
“Security Chief Hopkins here—the prisoners are ready.”
“Bring them in,” the Dwarf hissed into the recessed receiver before the others had a chance to say a thing. It was an opportunity
to break off discussion of the country-wide situation, which was to the Dwarf’s advantage. Within seconds the thick metal
doors of the immense high tech communications room they sat in whooshed open with puffs of air on their hidden hydraulic systems,
and two men wearing green uniforms with their rank insignias torn off the shoulders, leaving bald empty spots that bespoke
crimes— and punishments—came in. The two, eyes brimming over with terror-squeezed tears, were marched to one side of the table
between four submachine-gun-toting beefy MP’s also with the same green uniforms, but these with the letters N.A.U.A.S.C. still
on them. The men’s hands were bound behind their backs by plastic ties, their ankles as well, making them walk in short little
steps like a Chinese woman of old with wrapped feet. They were as trapped as roaches in a roach motel. And they knew it.