The Damn Disciples Page 12

  Although Stone had no sense of mortality in his state, still he didn’t want to fall into the great vat of drugs he paddled. But the fumes made it such hard going that he had to turn his head as he walked around the high wooden platform stirring. Had to turn away, trying to breathe in what little air there was coming from cracks in the wooden walls. The building had no aeration system, no safety features of any kind. The very thought was laughable. Men were expendable. Every-thing else was not. They were like light bulbs, used until they popped and then replaced.

  On the fifth day of his tending to the drug pot, Stone suddenly heard a scream in the late afternoon and glanced over toward the other vat and .his fellow stirrer, just in time to see him slipping over the side of the steel cauldron—and right into the thing. His screams only lasted a second, and then he went under. Stone could see from his vantage point the man’s hands waving wildly above the boiling mixture. Then it, too, went under, and within seconds the whole mess began boiling over.

  “Emergency, emergency overflow,” the foreman screamed as he rushed down from his overseeing station on an even higher platform above. He ran over to the boiling stew pot and slammed the Emergency Off switch on the gas jets beneath the pot. The flames went out—but the liquid didn’t. The stuff cascaded right over the top of the great iron container, splashing down the sides—and over the foreman. He screamed as Stone watched, still walking around, for he knew if he stopped for even seconds his might go the same route. The stuff was hot as boiling tar and stuck all over the foreman’s flesh and face like smoking napalm. He raced around the floor smashing into things as other supervisors yelled and ran around, the whole place had erupted into a mad chaos.

  The Nectar-coated foreman, his whole body smoking from the superhot coating of a dozen different mind drugs, ran right into Stone’s gas jets below, and his stomach hit against the steel side of the burner system. His face and chest folded over forward into the rows of flame, and he burst into fire himself, as the stuff in the state it was in was highly inflammable. Now he was on fire and screaming, a human torch rushing around the floor threatening to take the whole place down, as every square inch of it was made of wood.

  “Burndown! Burndown!” the second foreman screamed out, rushing over past the burning torch of smoking flesh and turning off Stone’s flames as well. Two other robed cultees came rushing over from across the floor and splashed buckets of water from the water tank that fed the drug mix. The burning man slammed facedown onto the floor, where he continued to writhe around like a snake on fire. The others splashed their ten-gallon buckets over the whole mess. And within seconds the fire was out. The flesh-bubbling dying thing on the floor mewed like a squashed kitten.

  The operation was shut down for about an hour while the whole thing got sorted out. The body of the other stirrer was dragged out of the muck. He looked about as bad as the burned husk of foreman on the floor, his whole body blackened now with a charcoallike substance that coated him from hairless head to fleshless toe. Both bodies were put into a wheelbarrow, and Stone, while his pot was being emptied and cleaned, was told to take the load over to C building. The new foreman was going to take the time to clean out both cauldrons. Make sure there were no further problems. Guru Yasgar would make heads roll if there were. Or worse.

  One of the slightly higher-ranking pods—a class-C pod as compared to Stone’s own Pod D status—helped him with the foul-smelling barrow and guided them to the north side of town. Stone hadn’t been in this section before, and he saw that it was empty of buildings after they had gone about four blocks. There was a large field, then a hill, and on the other side, a long two-story-high log structure. Only, this one looked more finely carpentered than many of the other buildings in the camp. The walls were sealed and tight, the roof without leaks.

  Stone and Pod #83 came to the door, where two guards were armed with submachine guns, the only place in the town other than Yasgar’s own palatial residence where there were armed men.

  “Delivery of two terminated pods,” said Pod #83, holding the right handle of the wheelbarrow.

  “All right, bring them in,” the guard replied in a bored manner, pushing back the door and pointing to the ramp to one side of the building. They walked over and, getting a good start as there was nearly five hundred pounds of human sludge in the barrow, rushed it up the ramp and inside. It smelled inside. Stone, even in his somnambulent mental state, noticed it instantly. Or rather, his nose did, which began twitching and snorting all on its own, so foul and distasteful was the odor. And in his dim-witted brain Stone knew as well what the smell was.

  “Over here, over here,” the guard said impatiently, pointing to a crude conveyer belt. It was about a yard wide and had foot-high walls of tin-covered slats on each side of it so nothing could pop up off of it. Which was a good idea, considering the kind of load Stone and Pod #83 were carrying. As they lifted the decomposing bodies, softened by the flame so that big slabs of them fell off, Stone and his helper swung the bodies up and onto the conveyer belt. Blood and slime and charred gunk splashed up onto the tin sides and some came up and got them in the face. Though neither man was noticing such things.

  “Good, now back off,” the guard said, as he motioned for the two to get out of the way. He walked over to a small gas-powered generator and pulled the cord on it hard. The engine didn’t catch the first time, but on the second try it burped to life and gave out with a loud thumping sound. The conveyer belt began to move, and within Stone’s mindlessness there was a ripple of curiosity. He hadn’t even known these things still existed anymore.

  The conveyer belt took the two still-smoking bodies down along the wooden canal about ten feet, where they disappeared inside a large metal box about ten feet long and six wide. There was a loud grinding sound from inside and then sounds of all kinds of things being snapped and crushed as the whole tin structure vibrated around on its supports. It only took about a minute, when the guard motioned them to walk to the other end and put the wheelbarrow under a round opening at the far end of the metal box. They placed the barrow right beneath the opening and the guard pulled a lever on the side. The round hole began extruding a ground-up burgerlike substance from its multiple holes. The bloody tendrils of human flesh poured out of the grinding machine and into the wheelbarrow. It only took about a minute for both corpses to be completely ground down into the same texture of chopped meat—bones, brains, eyeballs, fingernails, and all.

  “That’s it,” the guard said, pulling the lever back and forth a few more times to force the last few worms of human flesh out of the grinding machine. “Take it to the commissary.” Stone and Pod #83 turned and rolled the thing back out of the place and down the ramp, then walked slowly so as not to slop any of the nearly overflowing ground chuck onto the ground. And as they walked, Stone felt strange. It wasn’t that he could really think all that clearly about the events of the last hour, but something didn’t feel good inside. As if he had swallowed poison—in his brain.

  But if the grinding operation made him feel strange, when they arrived at the back door of K building and several assistant chefs came to the door to let them in the back way, Stone suddenly found himself ready to puke. For they were in the kitchen. The side entrance to the main dining area for the whole village. The cooks led the way down a slop-encrusted, fly-buzzing hallway and then into a cooking room where big pots were cooking over fires everywhere. The smell of sour bread and rotting vegetables was thick in the air.

  “Put them over here,” one of the cooks said, indicating a long wooden trough that had been once used to feed pigs. The wheelbarrow was tilted to the side as they both pulled up hard the handles of the barrow and the load of freshly chopped meat was deposited into the trough. The cook leaned forward and scraped out all that was still stuck inside the wheelbarrow. And even as Stone and Pod #83 turned and started wheeling the empty barrow out of the kitchen, the cooks were already grabbing handfuls of the meat and cooking it up into big square loaves of meat loaf.
Martin Stone, although he hadn’t eaten for nearly twelve hours, and was most definitely not a gourmet even when not at the mental level of an amoeba with Alzheimer’s disease, still didn’t think he was going to have lunch today.

  NINETEEN

  Once the whole mess in the Nectar factory was straightened out, which took a good two hours, Stone was back at work slaving over a hot drug vat. He stirred and he tried to feel nothing. The drug was certainly pushing him in that direction, with enough chemical force to subdue ten men. But Stone wasn’t an ordinary man. The Indians who had saved him had termed him the “Nadi,” giver of death. Such men were endowed with strengths, willpowers, depths of grit that made them…different. Thus Stone, unlike any of the hundreds of others who had been put through the “aura cleansing” process—and hooked on the Golden Nectar—felt something.

  It was his soul, his heart, that made him feel something. A spark of disgust, a germ of revulsion. A stirring in the guts that began fighting back against the blinding and deafening drugs. And as he walked around the platform, paddling the immense aluminum oar through the bubbling swamps of chemical brainfuck, Stone started growing angry. Within his idiocy he didn’t even know he was angry, but felt a gnawing bite that grew to a burning rage. And Stone’s face began loosening up a little from its dead, glazed expression, and his teeth began grinding together hard as he stirred.

  He had been back about an hour and a half at the oar when there was a big commotion at the front door and the guards were throwing themselves prostrate on the wooden floor. Stone gulped hard as he turned his head, continuing to walk the platform. It was—the Guru himself, the Great One. He had come to check out the damage to his precious drug-making equipment.

  “Was there any damage to the vats themselves?” the Guru asked. It took all of Stone’s nerve to even look at the man. He was huge, Stone could see that, even hidden within the all-encompassing black robe. His hood was thrown back, and Stone could see the round jowled face, the black eyes like black holes in space that could swallow whole planets, let one men, the mouth with a twisted, amused smile that bespoke pain and blood—tons of it. His ears pricked up as Guru Yasgar walked around the place inspecting the damage.

  “There can’t be any more problems,” he said with a raspy edge to his throat that set Stone’s hair on end. The man hardly sounded as if he had been born on earth, or had sprung from the womb of a human woman. “Because within two days we begin our shipments out to the surrounding countryside, ship our Nectar out so that others may benefit from the attainment of Perfect Aurahood.” The new foreman of the drug building nodded fervently as he walked along just paces behind Yasgar.

  “Yes, Great One, no mistakes,” the man said, knowing this was his chance to rise rapidly in the cult. “We have tested all gas jets and drainage systems. Everything is working perfectly.” Stone suddenly sensed that the Guru was about to glance up at him, and he ripped his head away from looking down and walked zombie-faced around the platform like an ox.

  “He is a good stirrer,” the foreman said, noticing the Guru looking up. “And we have replaced the stupid pod who fell in with an experienced pod who had moved on to another job.” He pointed up at the second vat, which had over-flowed earlier. The stirrer was big, with a huge chest, which without shirt as he pushed hard was covered with a copper sheen of sweat.

  The Guru surveyed the situation for a minute, taking in both men as he looked back and forth. Whatever he was looking for, he seemed satisfied.

  “Good, good, all is proceeding according to plan,” the hacksaw blade of a voice sawed out. “It shall soon be our destiny,” he said, looking around at the other four men who were involved in keeping the fires going and the chemicals pouring into the vats, “to control this whole country. To spread our word, our way of doing things. Our message will be the world’s message.”

  “The world’s message,” the others shouted back as one. They stood stiffly before him, ramrod straight, their eyes aimed ahead as no man dared look right into that dark, fat, swirling face, those pits of eyes that seemed to pierce anything like twin swords. The Guru suddenly turned with a swirl of his black robe and headed out the door. The Nectar makers looked at each other with terrified faces. They knew that they would wind up in C building if there was even the slightest mistake.

  Thus, they allowed Stone to work just a ten-hour shift that day, as they didn’t want to risk his being exhausted and adversely affecting their operation. The other man was released as well, and a new shift was put on. Stone was told to report back at eight in the morning, and he headed out, his head whirling from the day’s violent events. Things were shaking up inside him, there was no question about it. An earthquake had gone off inside his brain, and the aftershocks were rippling along every fiber of his being.

  That night was the weekly Ceremony of the Aura, where the Guru himself would perform the ritual. Stone marched in along with the rest after they had eaten dinner. He had eaten his vegetables—but had made sure they were served on a different plate than the meat. He would never eat meat in this place again. He didn’t know much, but that much he knew.

  The pods were gathered in a large circle around the Great Room and then handed their goblets of Golden Nectar. Stone waited until the server had just walked past him, and, making a quick glance around, saw that no one’s eyes were on him. He tilted his head back but lifted the long sleeve of his brown robe—and poured it right inside. The stuff was sticky and dripped down his armpit and chest. But he got away with it. He lowered the goblet, wiped his mouth, and smiled that dumb smile that they all got right after drinking it. He held the cup out with a dead stare so the server could take it back.

  When they had all finished, they were commanded to begin dancing around the room as drums began welling up from hidden musicians around the room. The circle of drugged-out pods and higher robes started turning, slowly at first, like the wheel of a great wagon. But after a few minutes, as the drug really hit home and their bodies got loose like rag dolls and the music swelled, they moved faster. Skulls were handed to them by half-naked girls, and the dancing men grabbed them from the outstretched hands as they flew by, like brass rings from a merry-go-round. Holding the skulls, they waved their arms in the air dramatically, spinning them, making them part of their dance, bone batons.

  Already Stone could feel something happening inside him. He hadn’t had a dose of the Elixir for nearly sixteen hours now. And it was starting to wear off, slowly, for they had them all doped up to the near-limits of human tolerance. But enough so that his brain began clearing, a few of the cobwebs were brushed away, the doors over the rooms to his thoughts and memories began opening. And it hurt. The withdrawal began immediately. His muscles ached even as he danced and jumped along with the rest of them. He could feel a cold sweat break out over his entire body as the withdrawal began making the nervous and circulatory systems aware that something unpleasant was up.

  Suddenly a cloud of smoke seemed to fill the entire center of the long wooden floor, and the pods let out gasps of blissed-out terror. And even as they twirled around, from out of the blue smoke appeared the Guru in his ceremonial long red satin robe that looked as if it had been taken from a cardinal or something, and forcibly, as there were bullet holes and bloodstains around where the heart was. Beside him was a woman dressed all in black leather, wearing spiked studs around her shoulders, waist, and head. And on the other side of the Guru sat a dog, which had bizarre markings painted all over its side in bloodred symbols. It glared ahead, its own head frozen just like the dancing pods’. And Stone knew instantly, as it slammed into his brain like a safe falling from the top of the Empire State Building, that it was his sister, April, and the damn dog—his damn dog. The bastard had stolen everything that was his. Even his fucking brain.

  Yet Stone could feel within the migraine headache that rippled through his dazed head from the shock that he was starting to get some intelligence back. But if just being off the stuff a few hours was any indication, he w
as in for some bad times. For even as he danced around the Guru as blue smoke swirled in great swelling puffs from the wind created by the dancing pods who circled ever faster, Stone’s whole nervous system began twitching, shivers of exquisite pain running through his fingers, elbows, wrists, neck, and knees. All his joints ached as if he had a very bad flu. And the rage that Stone felt was so powerful as he saw the murderous Yasgar with all that was precious to him that Stone made himself dance even harder, jump even higher, so that he didn’t explode or go mad from the pain and confusion and the burning hatred inside him.

  “Think, think, you bastard,” he screamed silently to himself, though his mind was having a little bit of trouble re-turning to its operating circuit boards. He knew he couldn’t do anything now—he had to keep dancing and act as if nothing was wrong. The machete-clutching guards who surrounded the room at least three on each wall were ample proof of what would happen to anyone who even tried to harm a hair on the Sacred One’s head. So Stone danced and made his twitching lips smile and laugh as the others were.

  As if they were all in paradise when in fact they were all in hell.

  The Guru waved his hands. “Faster, faster,” he exhorted the pods. “Move, you slime. I command you. Make the skulls in your hands blurs. Thus the auras of the living and the dead are united.” He held his hands to the-ceiling sky and blue lightning seemed to slash down from above and right into his fingertips. And as Stone watched in growing honor and pain, he saw April, in her black leather Dominatrix outfit, pull out a whip and begin snapping it out at the twirling dancers. She smiled the smile of the demonically possessed as she cracked the whip, the long leather tongue taking pieces right out of cheeks and arms, slicing through robes here and there. But the pods only danced into more of a tornado fury.