The Rabid Brigadier Read Online Free

today?” The fighting animal followed right along at his heels, knowing instinctively that nutrition was involved.
     Stone walked about fifteen yards to a rock overhang that looked out across the mountain plateau and onto groves of trees growing
     up from the slopes that surrounded it. He rested himself on his stomach and elbows, got the dog quieted down and still beside
     him, and sightedup through the telescopic view on top. He flicked a small black switch and the power unit of the infrared detector hummed
     on. The whole world came to life in a bizarre pattern of red and orange dancing waves of light. He saw things by their heat
     patterns now, the birds breathing hard in the trees, owls, and rodents along the ground. With the cool air around them, the
     heat of living matter seemed to burn like little red suns against the cold blue background.
    There—movement. A jackrabbit. Stone followed it as it hopped madly across an open space and he eased his finger down on the
     trigger. The autosilencer built into the muzzle released a harsh hiss as the .30 caliber slug spun free and through the night
     air. In a fraction of a second it tore into the rabbit, sending it flying in a heap of spinning fur up into the sky like something
     aiming for space flight. Then it came down again hard in a reddish-looking heap and didn’t move.
    “Go!” Stone commanded, pointing at the downed prey. He stared over at the pitbull, which stared back. “Fetch, get that fucking
     rabbit—that’s dinner! Go! Go!” Stone commanded it in his most stern tones, but the pitbull just looked at him as if he was
     crazy. Then it sniffed the air coming from the dead animal and came up on all fours. The ninety-pound satchel of steel grace
     leapt six feet from the ledge they were on and began running at full speed across the open field. Stone Watched the heat blur
     of the dog as it moved like a panther toward the fading orange glow of the rabbit. Excaliber picked up the cottontail and
     set it carefully beneath his canines, hardly pressing down at all, and took off again back toward Stone. He came to a skidding
     halt before the rock and, resting on his haunches, the bull terrier launched itself back up onto the rock ledge. Its front
     paws made it but its back ones didn’t and they clawed frantically against the rock with a horrible kind of scratching sound
     that a fingernailmakes when scraped on a blackboard. Stone reached down and grabbed hold of the flailing animal around the chest and pulled
     it up with a heave.
    “Good boy,” Stone said when the dog was at last planted on terra firma again. The pitbull dropped the prey at his feet. It
     was a monster of a rabbit, as big as he’d ever seen—what was left of it. For the .30 caliber slug had taken its head clean
     off. But what was left was plenty. Even for the two of them.

CHAPTER
Three
    W HEN STONE stepped outside the tarp the next morning the sky was still black as night and churning with a malevolent fury.
     He wouldn’t have known it was daytime but for the dim ashen face of the sun straight off on the horizon, barely able to burn
     its shape through the ceiling of clouds. Something was in the offing, something bad. The bull terrier trotted out next to
     him, took one look, turned and walked back inside.
    “Yeah, you got the right idea,” Stone muttered as he spat a thick gob of sleep-collected phlegm onto the snow-speckled ground.
     “Unfortunately, we got promises to keep.” He pulled the tarp down and folded it up, stowing it in back of the Harley. Excaliber,
     lying contentedly next to the front wheel of the bike, was suddenly exposed to the cold biting wind that seemed to sweep across
     the slope as if bidding them good morning. He stood up, looked at Stone with nasty eyes and then shook his whole body, sending
     a wave ofwarm blood coursing through his veins. The pitbull stretched forward and back, pulling his legs as far as they would go in
     each direction in some canine