The Vile Village Read online

  Stone didn’t know if the little bastard couldn’t, or just wouldn’t, speak, but he didn’t utter a word to Stone. He just looked around furtively all the time. He seemed more animal than human, and Stone felt a strange revulsion for the muscle-bound eight-year-old miniature of his father’s barrel-chested, tree-limbed physique.

  “Come on,” he said, motioning once he had his firearms strapped back on and loaded. Moving slowly, the barefoot kid behind him, clad only in black leather pants, Stone led the way to the back staircase. As far as he could determine, the main stairs were at the opposite end. There was just a chance that this was a service or emergency exit, because he knew there would be a shitload of guards in front of the place. Stone went up the stairs, taking from his pocket the push dagger, which was still soaked in red from the throat it had recently cut.

  He pushed open the thick wooden door at the top a fraction of an inch at a time. They were in luck. It opened to a backyard filled with refuse and junk, and a chain-link fence about forty yards off, and then woods another hundred yards or so beyond. Glancing down, Stone saw that the biker kid, even though horribly wounded, had a look of anticipation on his slightly demonic face. He lived to fight, to kill, to let blood. His father had schooled him well.

  Stone pushed open the door hard and saw, to his horror, a guard leaning back on a chair reading a dirty magazine. So engrossed was he in the size forty-fours staring up at him that he didn’t catch the movement until Stone was upon him. Stone kicked out the legs of the chair at the same time he slammed his hand over the reader’s forehead, pushing him straight back into the cement walk behind him. The back of the thug’s skull cracked in twenty places, and the whole head seemed to cave in like an egg hit by a hammer. But Stone was gone by the time the body hit the ground. He and the boy shot across the yard filled with debris from the past—pieces of rusting cars, broken washing machines and refrigerators, all the things that had slowly disappeared from use since electricity and every appliance it had powered had also disappeared from the territory.

  The kid was a little speed demon, pushing Stone to exert himself to his limits just because he couldn’t stand the idea of being beaten by a fucking eight-year-old. Leaping wreckage, running right over jagged springs and piles of busted bricks, the two reached the link fence at exactly the same instant. They both kept their momentum going, pushing off with the last step so they landed two thirds of the way up the ten-foot-high fence. Then they were over and off into the field, filled with weeds and broken glass. Stone winced when he thought of the kid’s feet going over the sharp edges, but apparently they were so callused, or the kid was so tough, that he ran on without the slightest faltering or expression of pain.

  Then they were at the woods, and both stopped short and tamed to see if they were being pursued. But they weren’t. Stone turned to the junior biker and said, breathing hard, “Thanks kid.”

  The biker heir looked at Stone with that animal stare that he seemed to take on the whole world with, like some kind of wild child raised by the dogs or the wolves, then his mouth moved into a grimace, as if it were hard for him even to say the word.

  “Thanks,” he hissed out like a mountain cat. And suddenly he turned and was gone. Gone in a flash into the bushes and shadows of the forest. Stone turned and headed in the other direction, toward the whorehouse. He had to get the damn dog out of there. The bastards would take it out on Excaliber, of that Stone had no doubt. He carefully made his way to the brothel, through the ten blocks of alleys and side streets. As he turned the last comer he looked around, checking for the reflection of muzzles at the windows. They hadn’t come here yet. Maybe they still didn’t know he’d escaped.

  But as Stone took one more step toward the place, some twenty yards off, he saw that he was completely and terribly wrong. They did know and they were waiting. Jayson flanked by a half dozen lower-echelon gangers, blocked his path. Yet Jayson and his thugs didn’t particularly concern Stone. What concerned Martin Stone was the lion that Jay-son was holding on a chain leash. The lion that was staring at Stone and licking its chops.

  “I underestimated you from the start, Mr. Preacher Boy,” the effeminate gang leader said. He was now dressed in some kind of lime-green toga that covered his body from neck to foot, and one of those omnipresent silk scarves that he wore wrapped around his neck and the lower part of his face. His thin cheeks were heavily rouged for the occasion, and dark purple lipstick outlined his mouth in a heart shape. “I knew you were tough, but I didn’t realize you were smart W. But then you’re not that smart or you wouldn’t be standing there now, would you?” He laughed, a little chirp of disdain, and then reached down to unchain the lion.

  “I really ought to thank you in a way. It’s funny how things work out.” Jayson grinned. “With my brothers dead, l run the show now. I always hated the dumb bastards, anyway. It’s too bad you couldn’t have stuck around. You and I would have made a great team.” He blew Stone a kiss, then pulled the clasp back on the lion’s chain. “But of course now I have to kill you.” The lion looked around, confused for a moment, until Jayson pointed at Stone and said, “Kill him, Pussy. Rip his guts out.”

  The lion had taken but one step forward toward its target when they all heard a howling, smashing, growling, and breaking sound that was extremely loud. Even the lion stopped, startled, the mane on its neck going up like a porcupine. The whole crew looked up at the second story of the whorehouse where the unearthly sounds were coming from just in time to see an insane dog burst right through the window, sending the glass, frame, and all exploding out into the street. Excaliber landed on a small six- by five-foot terrace outside the windowsill, trailing a long chain that was pulling the entire brass bed behind it, one end of which had reached the wall at the window. The pitbull stared down at the scene below, instantly figuring out just what the hell was going on. Then it launched itself like a NASA rocket headed for the moon.

  Everything exploded into violent motion. The chain of the dog reached its limits, and it became a question only of which was going to go first—the dog’s thick, muscular neck or the tube of brass that the chain was attached to. But there was no question, really. The brass vertical tube snapped dead center, and both broken pieces flew out like projectiles toward opposite walls. The pitbull took off right over the small wall of the terrace and descended straight down to-ward the lion below, like a hawk swooping down from the sky for a rabbit, not quite realizing that this particular rabbit was three times as big as him and had teeth that belonged in the Smithsonian.

  The lion, realizing that the shit was hitting the fan, decided to carry out its or to kill Stone first—then it would deal with this puny white thing hurtling toward it. It charged forward, the ten yards toward Stone, coming at him with blood in its eyes. But Stone had taken advantage of the momentary diversion of the pitbull’s theatrics to pull out his Ruger. As the lion was about to make its death leap, he got off a shot. Stone missed the beast’s head but took out its right front leg, and it tumbled over in a spill as Stone dived to the right to escape the momentum of the rolling body. Before the animal could even rise, Excaliber had bolted up onto its back. God knew just what the pitbull thought he was doing—quite possibly the dog didn’t quite know itself—but it appeared that the dog was trying to ride the thing as if leaving the gate at the Annual Canine Rodeo. The lion let out with a brain-shattering roar as it wildly tried to dislodge the insane flea clinging to its back.

  But Stone didn’t have time to watch what was going to happen next, for the second that he got off the single shot that nipped the lion’s right leg, Jayson came charging at him with a wild shriek like Tony Perkins in Psycho. Both of the gang leader’s hands suddenly emerged from out of his purple toga, and the long, clawlike fingernails slashed at the air like daggers. Stone was amazed at how fast the guy was. Some-how he had thought of the two dead brothers as the tough ones, but this son of a bitch moved like a goddamn leopard. He lunged and clawed and rushed at Stone, the six-inch-long ste
el nails ripping at the air again and again like spiked paddle wheels digging for blood.

  Stone stumbled as he tried to back out of the way. And that was almost the last mistake he ever made, for Jayson was upon him in a flash. The skinny madman leapt toward Stone, slashing in a blur with his right hand. Stone felt a searing pain along his whole right side as the claws dug into his flesh about half an inch deep and a foot down. The sudden pain sent his Ruger flying from his hand as the fingers went completely numb. Somehow he managed to pang the second hand that he knew was coming. He got off a quick leg kick to the shin, and Jayson fell backward as Stone glanced down and saw that although blood was pouring from his side like it was cheap, he was going to live at least from that slice. But Jayson did a backward roll as he hit the ground and came up, instantly moving forward again. He let out a cheap imitation of the lion’s roar, though in its own way, Stone found it no less frightening, and charged again.

  Stone looked at the pistol lying on the ground about ten feet away, but there was no time. Off to the side he heard a dreadful sound, like something screaming horribly, and then he heard a great commotion. But there wasn’t time to see what the hell was going on with the damn dog. For Jayson, again with amazing speed, was flying toward him, his lime-green toga whipping all around him, revealing bony white legs with injection marks running up and down, all cratered like the moon. The steel claws beelined for Stone’s face, ready to rip out anything they touched. Jayson had eviscerated and killed many a tough, tough man with these claws. Stone was about to join the club.

  But the would-be victim wasn’t quite ready to be taken out by fake fingernails. As Jayson came in, Stone twisted suddenly around and to the side of him—an aikido move his father had taught him for avoidance of knives and bayonets. As the right claw came searching for him, Stone grabbed around the wrist and pulled hard, snapping his other hand over the top of Jayson’s so he had the claw-hand trapped between his own. He turned his hip with a lightning snap, and Jayson stopped dead in his tracks and flipped right up into the air, making a circle above the ground with his wrist as the center. As he came down, Stone positioned his own hand just right, meeting the falling body.

  With his right hand controlled by Stone, Jayson flew down headfirst, right into his own curved steel fingernails. The six-inch-long daggerlike claws dug into the center of his face, and both eyes were pierced cleanly through, so that the hand pushed all the way into Jayson’s brain and exited out the back. Stone jumped back, letting go of his attacker. It was a horrible sight, a man impaled on his own hand. The claws pierced through in five places, brain and slime issuing out from every puncture. The brother’s eyeballs, both of them skewered like onions, slid out around the claws and down onto his face.

  Jayson stumbled backward, taking one little step after an-other, as if he were learning some new dance. He tried to scream but could only get a pitiful little mewing sound to come out from between his bloody lips. Then, pulling hard with his other hand, he somehow ripped out the claw from his face and it flew free. An explosion of all that was in his head followed close behind, like baggage afraid it would miss the plane. Brain tissue, blood, both eyeballs trailing tendrils, and yolk sacks—all flew out, covering the front of the body and sliding to the ground. Then the last of the Strathers brothers collapsed in a pile of his own slime and started to rot.

  As Stone had been battling for his very life, Excaliber had been doing the same. His ride aboard the lion had lasted all of three seconds before the beast threw him off with a great heave of its golden shoulders. The huge predator turned and searched for the pitbull who, by instinct, had leapt off in a different direction the moment he landed. He came in suddenly from the lion’s right side, jaws open to the maximum, not aware that dogs weren’t supposed to fight lions. Na unless the species had been bred for it, like his had. The lion pushed forward to charge, but in trying to compensate for its broken right leg, which Stone had shot, the creature went a little too high as it leapt at the terrier.

  And that was all that Excaliber needed. Seeing the opening, he changed his motion in mid-stride and, instead of going up, went sharply down. The lion’s stretched jaws passed just overhead as they snapped closed on dogless air. Excaliber shot down low as he passed underneath the huge carnivore. Then, seeing an excellent target, he slammed his teeth down on the lion’s testicles, which were right in front of him. Closing like a bear trap around them, the dog pulled hard and bit them free of the body, tossing them high in the air so that they shot up like tennis balls and didn’t come down for a good forty feet.

  The lion let out a roaring scream that sent crows flying from trees a mile off. It jumped and fell and writhed around in the dirt and seemed to go into quite an epileptic-type seizure. The pitbull was the last thing on its mind. Its fucking balls had been snipped off, and it wasn’t going to get them back again. The carnivore rushed forward, jumping from side to side, out of control, as if electric currents were going through all its muscles. The huge jaws bayed to the cruel skies as it ran.

  Mercifully for the animal, some of the Strathers gang, standing in a half circle around the street, thought the creature was coming at them and peppered it with a sudden bar-rage of fire, sending the thing skidding in a bloody pile right into two of the men, sending them flying. There it lay, its big eyes staring in dead shock at the emasculation it had suffered, a tragic ending for so noble a beast.

  But the lion’s death was the last thing Stone or the pitbull, which walked to his side with a murderous look in its burning eyes, had to worry about. Dozens of the Strathers gang were gathering on each side of them, coming down the street from both ends. And as they came, they took out their pistols, their knives, their brass knuckles, their ice picks. These two were going to be turned into Swiss cheese. The gang’s leaders were dead, but their underlings still knew how to kill.

  Chapter

  Twenty-one

  * * *

  “Dog, it’s been nice,” Stone said as he raised both pistols toward the approaching killers. “And thanks for that lion bit—that took balls.” The pitbull looked at him and winced, as if offended by the pun. Then it turned toward the advancing ranks and picked out the closest of the gangers in its mind, deciding that he would be the first one it would strike. It knew the odds said it was all over. The dog was no fool.

  Just as the gangers began closing in to strike the final blows, there was a commotion from an alley right across the street from Stone. And to his amazement and joy a whole fucking cavalry of farmers came riding in, with Hernandez in the lead. They rode mules and donkeys, horses and ponies. Some ran in bare feet. But they had come to fight, as Stone had told them they must. In their hands were machetes and hoes, pitchforks and shovels with both edges sharpened. They obviously didn’t have a hell of a lot of firepower, but they had guts by the ton. Stone’s tired face couldn’t help but On as he saw the jaws of the gang members drop open at the sight of an invasion of little brown farmers coming in on mangy mules moving at about eight miles per hour. It was hard for their slow minds to assimilate such information.

  But the farmers were for real. And one of the Strathers gang, unlucky enough to be in the front ranks, found that out as a pitchfork suddenly sailed from the ranks of smelly steeds. The tool flew a good fifty feet through the air and found its mark, slamming dead center in the man’s chest, coming out the back as if looking for earth to turn. The ganger fell backward, a bloody scream issuing from his lips. Several dozen of the Strathers bunch who had surrounded Stone now looked around terrified, wondering if they should make a run for it. But by then it was already too late. The army of mules spread out to two flanks and cut them off. Then they closed in.

  It was a bloody, bloody battle as the Strathers bunch unloaded their firearms right into the charging brigade. A shit-load of the farmers went down, as did many of the animals. But the farmers had already come to terms with the fact that many of them—maybe all of them—would die. And they were no longer afraid. They waded into the kil
lers with their simple farm tools. But blades that cut grass, razor edges that slice weeds, will cut human flesh just as easily. And they tore into the Strathers ranks like they were reaping a wheat-field. The gangers fell like flies, bleeding from numerous vents. Stone fired carefully, shot after single shot, making each one count, as he was almost cleaned out of ammunition, and Excaliber took out a knee or a face here and there, dropping the bastards in their tracks.

  It almost appeared to Stone that things were actually looking up when down the street, on the run, came nearly sixty more of the Strathers bunch, all carrying heavy weaponry from their armory. They came in blasting, and a dozen of the farmers fell from their mounts, splattered in red. The two groups surged together, and fierce fighting again erupted, with faces disappearing and chests opening up like umbrellas everywhere. But the farmers were now clearly getting the worst of it. And Stone, having fired his last shot, was down to using his blade in one hand, his pistol butt in the other, à la Davy Crockett’s last moments at the Alamo. He heard the pitbull snarling and ripping at something, then turned to see the creature biting at the face of one of the Strathers boys. All he could see was red, and all he could hear were the screams. But it was just a holding action. Stone couldn’t kid himself. The slugs were flying closer by the second.

  Suddenly there was a high-pitched sound that caught every man’s attention. They all looked to the right down the main street, and out of the misty air was riding a fleet of motorcycles. The Head Stompers coming full blast, their bikes roaring like a herd of stampeding elephants. It took only seconds for the attacking army to come clearly into view, and when they did, those who had been fighting in the center of the street stopped all battle for a moment to watch, so bizarre and terrifying was the sight.

  There were nearly three dozen of them, and they stood atop the seats of their bikes, steering them with ropes and belts attached to the handlebars. They pulled at the things like horses’ reins and drove at full speed, letting loose with a screeching war cry that would have set a corpse’s skin to crawling. They moved at incredible speed, their huge, muscled bodies bare from the waist up and covered with fresh tattoos and war paint. So at ease were they atop their bikes, even at seventy or eighty miles per hour, it looked like they had been born there.