Last Ranger Read Online Free PDF Page B

sounds constantly and
     flapping their wings. In some carrion gluts they were ripping into each other, not out of protecting their food, it appeared,
     but out of sheer madness as they began plucking at each other with sharp hooked beaks that could tear through the thickest
     of hides. Their frenzy reminded Stone of films he’d seen on the feeding frenzies of sharks when they gathered in large groups
     around a kill, a whale or something big. They would start hitting at anything, each other, even themselves.
    But he didn’t think birds were supposed to act that way. Yet these were. Swooping in great herds of dark feathers, the vultures
     built larger and larger circles in the sky as other carrion eaters gathered from hundreds of miles around to take part in
     the smorgasbord of decay. He could see the whole situation was going to explode. There were just too many bumping into each
     other until the very heavens seemed filled with nothing but feathers. Stone knew something was going to go. It was like a
     supersaturated chemical—with the addition of just another drop, it goes over the edge and crystallizes. Only when these birds
     went it wasn’t into crystals but virulent madness.
    Suddenly they were diving down like kamikaze bombers slamming into others of their species and any other unfortunate living
     things below. Beaks slashed and snapped at everything, even trees and rocks. They bit into one another in the air and on the
     ground with vicious snaps. This was no fun and games, but ten thousand six-foot-wingspanned birds who had all gone bananas.
     And Stone just happened to be in the same madhouse.
    Suddenly there was a loud snapping of wings just above him and he tipped his head up to see about a dozen of the gangly creatures
     coming down like misfired missiles. Stone swerved the Harley to the right at the same instant he ripped out his 9mm Beretta.
     He sprayed the thing above and around him in the air and saw feathers and blood go flying in all directions as a few of them
     plummeted to the ground behind him. But it was as if they knew no fear, they were beyond all that. It was a frenzy of pure
     numbers, of losing what little mind a vulture has and letting it all go in a kind of bacchanalian feast to the gods, a blood-drunken
     orgy from which many would not emerge alive.
    Stone suddenly let the bike rip forward, wanting to just get the hell out of there and fast. He accelerated to fifty miles
     per hour, not wanting to go much faster as the long stretch of prairie was marred with holes and ridges. And if he went down
     in the midst of all this…. Stone didn’t let his mind dwell on it.
    A dead wild bull that had been decapitated by the tornado was lying about forty yards off to the right, and a virtual blanket
     of feathers covered the thing, ripping it like there was no tomorrow. Usually vultures were attracted to the motionless, the
     still, the dead. But their excitement had altered their behavior patterns—and it was Stone’s bike that suddenly caught their
     attention as he tore past.
    There was a thunderous flapping of wings that totally unnerved Stone. When he swung his head around not slowing an inch he
     saw every feathery son-of-a-bitching one of them rising up en masse. They were not exactly graceful birds and slammed and
     bumped into each other all over the place, actually knocking each other out in some cases so that limp wings spiraled down
     to the ground where they lay broken. But the rest, several hundred of them, rose up about eighty feet, circling the bull a
     few times just to get their bearings, and then took chase after one Martin Stone.
    Stone couldn’t believe it as he kept glancing over his shoulder, and the flock kept growing closer by the second. They were
     clearly coming after him, doubtless already salivating or drooling whatever juices flowed in a vulture’s beak. Stone swung
     the autopistol back over his shoulder without even looking, just gauging the angle of fire, and