Warlord's Revenge Page 18

  “Keep it open,” Stone said as he came in on wobbly feet. “I’m out of here as soon as I get my bike going.”

  “What—what happened?” the old man asked nervously as he glanced back down the dark dirt road searching for signs of life. But he saw nothing—so far.

  “Look, pal, I didn’t tell you because it was none of your business—and because if you knew, if they found you, they would’ve tortured you until—ah, you don’t even want to know. Anyway, I’m Martin Stone. Enemy number-one on their most-wanted list—bring in dead only.”

  “Well, I don’t care what you done,” Pliers said as he walked along beside Stone, who was headed over toward the barn where his Harley sat hidden. “Any enemy of those scum, as far as I’m concerned, is a friend of mine. But you better head out along the back roads. They’ll send out super-souped-up cars on the main road—catch anything that moves. I’ll show you the way.”

  “Ain’t going that way,” Stone said as he nearly stumbled, making his way over some loose boards just inside the barn. “My sister’s back there—I’m going in for her.”

  “You’ll n-never make it,” Pliers said, stuttering in sheer terror at the thought as he tried to light the way ahead, his hand held out to the side and grasping the flickering candle. “Those guys are—I mean, I’ve seen them—I mean—”

  “Skip it, old man,” Stone said as he saw the black Harley sitting there like a bull in the gray-streaked darkness. “Where’s the damn dog?” Stone said, looking around.

  “Where is that little—” Pliers asked with a tone of incredible weariness in his voice. “From the moment you left, that son of a bitch was nothing but a ball of trouble. Got into every damn thing in the place—opened up every crate, pulled out every supply. And when it comes to eating, damn thing slurped up the first helping I gave before I even put it down. Lucky to get my hand out in one piece. And then it looks up at me and growls. Like there’d better be more or—Little mutt scared me, I’ll tell you. So I just kept feeding him and feeding him every time I came out near the barn. Or else the growls would start up from the darkness. Why, that mutt of yours gobbled down in two days what my own damn dog eats in about a month. What’s wrong with the creature —thyroid trouble, worms?”

  “The only trouble with that dog is his fucking brains are screwed on backward,” Stone said, whistling loudly into the darkness. “He thinks the entire planet and everybody on it are here for one purpose—to serve him. He thinks he’s a king—when he’s just a stinkin’ dog. You hear that,” Stone bellowed into the spiderwebbed rafters of the dusty barn. “You’re just a fucking dog—now get out here. ’Cause I’m starting this bike up and moving out. And when the Mafia gets here and finds Martin Stone’s dog, I think they’re going to be very pleased about that.”

  As if getting the drift, if not the grammatical subtleties, of Stone’s words, a low shape came lumbering out from a corner of the place, its long, untrimmed nails plopping down with lazy steps. “Well, his highness makes an appearance,” Stone said with biting sarcasm. “You look like shit—you know that, dog?” Stone said, shaking his head as he saw the apparition that suddenly staggered into view and stood next to the Harley, lit up by the now straight candle flame. The animal was covered with dust—and food. The old man had apparently fed the pitbull so much out of his fearful state that pieces of meat, bread, and milk, actually covered the animals’ head and back. Its stomach was so distended, Stone swore it would drag an ant’s back walking along the ground.

  “Get on,” Stone said with disgust. “Either I’m sending you to finishing school—or off to live with the goddamn cannibals. The way they eat, you’d be right at home there.” Stone started the motor of the Harley, and the pitbull let out a little whine as it looked up at the seat that, from its vantage point, looked about a mile high. But as its master started slowly easing the bike forward, the pitbull let out a quick bark and leapt up. Usually it would have been no problem. The pitbull had made the jump from the ground to the back of the seat hundreds of times. But with the additional ten or fifteen pounds it had deposited away, its trajectory sort of petered out before it really got going. It got its front paws on the back but not its rear ones, and hobbled along on its back legs like some sort of circus animal behind Stone’s motorcycle.

  “Good God,” Stone exclaimed as he glanced around and saw the ridiculous dancing dog coming up behind. He stopped the bike, letting the animal catch up and somehow drag itself up, like a turtle up the side of Mt. Everest. “Try to leave the place with a little style, a little cool,” Stone muttered to the animal, and it snorted back at him as if nothing untoward had happened, though it couldn’t look him in the eye and settled down quickly on the leather seat ready for some heavy-duty digestive sleep.

  Stone started the Electraglide forward, his eyes having adjusted to the darkness enough to see well now.

  “More money—for the food, for your damn dog,” Pliers demanded, shuffling through the creaking darkness alongside Stone’s bike as they headed toward the front barn door.

  “Forget it, pal,” Stone snapped back. “I gave you a small fortune already and you know it. Thanks for the service. And I apologize for any discourtesy and bluffed biting this mutt may have inflicted on you. And one final bit of advice,” Stone said as he reached the outside air.

  “What the hell is that?” Pliers yelled out through the darkness now that his candle had blown out from a puff of night wind.

  “If those sons of bitches show up here, don’t let on you ever knew, saw, or talked to me—or my dog. Or you’re a dead man.” With that Stone accelerated slightly and eased through the narrow opening of the barbed wire. He slid back down the road, almost not moving for about fifty yards, high light off, the engine on a super-muffled low purr in neutral. He edged the bike along, kicking it with his legs until the saw a small path almost hidden by the bushes off to one side. Stone steered the bike onto it and saw within a few yards that it was an old path, probably used by cattle or deer decades ago but tamped down enough for him to make his way bent over through the bushes, which reached out from every side with twigs and thorns like a gauntlet of a million stabbing arms.

  The dog didn’t like it. Unprotected by thick outerwear like Stone, it got scraped all over its hide by all kinds of scratching tendrils. It kept letting out little yelps of pain and disturbed whines for Stone’s benefit up front. Which was all just fine with Martin Stone. The dog deserved a little penance, a little punishment for being such an asshole.

  The mall came into view alongside them, though dimly, about a hundred yards off through the trees. But he could see the lights from the displays, the lamps that stood on the corners flickering through the maze of branches that stood between him and the shopping center for all your murder needs. He gauged his approximate location by remembering certain signs he had seen when walking around the place and made a wide, circular route so he came out on the far side of the mall, past where he had made his escape from the torture room.

  He slowed the bike down as the path suddenly opened up into a flat field of dirt, and Stone could see, as he let the Harley coast slowly forward, his fingers on the trigger of the .50-caliber machine gun that was mounted at the front of the motorcycle—that there was water, or liquid of some kind, ahead. He crossed the hundred yards or so of packed dirt, and his eyes squinted in the gray fog as he tried to make out what the shapes were that he saw sticking up here and there in the inklike water. The smell as he drew closer was sickening, a thick, meaty stench that filled the nostrils and lungs like a noxious gas.

  Then all of a sudden he saw—and wished he hadn’t—arms and legs floating everywhere. Head and feet and sex organs. There were parts of men and women bobbing around in a mini-sea of blackness. Stone brought the bike until it was about twenty feet from the edge and looked in. He could see fairly well, as the light from the mall itself drifted over and back, bouncing off trees and clouds even though they were several hundred yards away. Stone couldn’t even see the other si
de of the lake, though he knew it had one. It was just that in the fog and mist that hovered over the place it seemed to disappear. Pieces of humanity were everywhere. It was like an old auto junkyard, a swamp where the parts of useless vehicles were driven, thrown, buried. Only these were human vehicles. They had been used for their value to Scalzanni, and then turned into hulks, dismembered and thrown into this watery hell.

  As he looked, Stone saw a snake slithering across the oily surface with a human hand in its jaws, taking it off to a more solid spot where it could be digested in peace. Stone turned as he heard a loud burp behind him and saw the dog staring toward the ocean of amputations too. It didn’t look good. The pitbull’s face seemed to turn green, and he jumped off the Harley suddenly, walked a few feet, and began puking.

  “Oh, God,” Stone said as he dismounted, throwing his hands up at the sky, which now rumbled with ominous thunder deep in the black guts of the mountainous clouds above. “What next, that’s all I want to know,” Stone mumbled half insanely. “What next?”

  “Me, that’s what’s next,” a voice, followed by a hellish cackle of laughter, came from off in the darkness. Stone’s eyes rocketed over to the three figures approaching him—one small, two much larger on each side. The ratlike face came into view at about twenty yards away.

  “Scalzanni,” Stone spat out as he looked at the Mafia chieftain, still clad in his omnipresent black silk double-breasted suit.

  “You were expecting the pope?” Scalzanni laughed, and the two psychos on each side of him emitted grunting noises that Stone took to be the same sort of general idea. “I don’t know how you got out of that room, Stone, but no mind now. “I still got your sister. She’s locked up right in that same cage you tried to heist her from. You want her, you come through me to get her.” The Mafia top man reached inside his coat with a crossdraw as both arms formed an X for a second. When they came out, his hands were gripping the long, glistening, pointed meat hooks that Stone had hoped he wouldn’t see again for a long, long time.

  Stone reached for his .44 Redhawk, but both of the torpedoes already had rods in their hands and whipped them up so they were targeted on Stone’s chest.

  “Oh, that wouldn’t be fair,” Scalzanni commented as he walked slowly toward Stone, twirling the flesh-rippers in each hand. “You and I—we’re gong to have this out like men. Hand-to-hand. They’ll make sure we stick to the rules.”

  “Rules—right.” Stone smirked as he pulled his hand slowly away from his Magnum. “Well, can I use my damn knife?” he asked as the Mafia killer stalked closer. Stone opened his jacket slowly to show the bowie hanging there. He could hear the dog still puking its guts out about ten feet behind him on the other side of the Harley. Probably didn’t even know that his master was about to become Italian cuisine.

  “But of course,” Scalzanni replied, motioning with his hooks for Stone to take it out. “The whole reason I ain’t just shooting you dead right now is ’cause you got a big rep, asshole. Killing you would give me bragging rights all around these parts. So take out whatever toothpick you got in there, ’cause it ain’t gonna do you a fucking bit of good.” Stone took up the offer and slowly extracted the blade from his side, getting a good grip on it. He didn’t really trust the torpedoes not to do him in. But they’d wait—until the last second. If their boss was winning, no guns. But if he started losing, Stone knew he’d have to be able to take out both of them too. Great.

  He stepped away from the Harley and glanced down quickly at the ground around him, searching the dirt for any drops or obstructions, so he wouldn’t get tangled up. He brought his eyes back up to the advancing Mafia killer. He’d seen the man do his thing with those hooks, and Stone had no illusions about the task ahead of him. The guy was small, as skinny as a fucking rail. But he was lethal with meat hooks. He circled slowly, planting one foot carefully down, then the next, making sure he made no mistakes.

  “Don’t be so shy,” Scalzanni said, coming almost straight toward Stone now. “Got some friends who want to meet you.” He held the hooks stretched out far at each end of his arm in the strange posture that Stone had seen him use just before he had killed the mountain man back at The Hot Load. Stone stepped back, not letting the arms get anywhere within reach.

  This was the right thing to do. Scalzanni suddenly struck, swooping both hands and the hooks in them down like the flapping wings of a condor. The two meat hooks came together in midair like brain-crushing tongs with a sudden eruption of sparks as metal slammed against metal. But Stone was gone, having danced a good yard away. Scalzanni was fast, incredibly fast. He moved with the paranoid, darting speed of a fucking weasel. Stone studied the hooks in each of the Mafia don’s hands. There was no opening for him, so he moved slowly but constantly backward, always in a circle to Scalzanni’s right. Out of the corner of his eye he noted the torpedoes watching with bemused grins as they let their .45s dangle loosely in their hands. They had no doubt as to the outcome of this particular match. He’d have to wait for the little slime to make a mistake, if he ever did, and then move in on him. The man’s fighting style was just too hard to penetrate.

  But it was Stone who made the mistake. Thinking he was still within the area he had scanned with his eyes, he stepped backward and found himself toppling over as his ankle was caught by a root. Suddenly he was lying flat on his back, his knife by his side. As he grabbed for it, all hell broke loose.

  Scalzanni, seeing his opportunity, charged forward, flailing away with both of the hooks like some sort of psychotic Captain Hook. The first hand missed, but the second, as he came right up to his fallen adversary, was coming in on target. As the meat hook in the Mafia killer’s right hand descended like a question mark searching for blood toward Stone’s skull, Stone tightened his eyes and prepared for the blow.

  It never came. Out of the shadows behind the Harley, a shape hurtled like a ball shot out of a catapault. Excaliber. His jaw opened as he leapt and suddenly the teeth came into violent contact with Scalzanni’s wrist, holding the hook that was descending on Martin Stone’s brain tissue. The dog slammed its jaws shut with all of the two thousand pounds per square inch it could exert, enough to chew through iron. A man’s skinny wrist was hardly any resistance at all. The hand, still holding the hook, suddenly shot free and spiraled off through the night air as if looking for something to kill. Excaliber continued his trajectory past the two men, coming down about eight feet off in the dirt. He instinctively stayed low as he hit, knowing the firepower would be erupting soon.

  Stone didn’t waste a second, taking advantage of the dog’s attack to leap to his own feet. Before Scalzanni had time to realize he had just lost his right hand and all that went with it, Stone was up, his hand grabbing around the left wrist holding the second hook. As the Mafia chief’s head swung back, Stone ripped the hook in a circle up and into the slime’s face. The point of the hook dug straight into Scalzanni’s narrow mouth, and as Stone ripped it up, as if hauling a piece of meat, the curved metal hook tore up through the skull, then out the top.

  It was as if Stone had the man impaled on an immense fishhook, and he quickly pushed his human “fish” backward. Scalzanni was in no position to resist, seeing as how his mouth, throat, and entire head were pierced clean through with his own weapon. His eyes twisted around madly in his head, which was already becoming coated with red that bubbled out the fracture at the top of the skull and from his nose and mouth. Making sure the frantically struggling Scalzanni was between him and the torpedoes, Stone rushed backward until he saw the black lake filled with arms and heads. With a burst of strength he gripped the handle of the meat hook and heaved with everything he had. The Mafia chief fairly took off from the ground and flew up into the air. He didn’t come down until he had gone a good twenty feet out above the black, oily swamp of death—the swamp where he had ordered hundreds of others thrown without a thought as to their wretched screams.

  Now he couldn’t scream, a half-inch-thick piece of metal taking up the spac
e where his vocal cords used to be. But he could flail around like a chicken with its head cut off, which he did. But only for a few seconds, for the swamp was like quicksand, like glue. And it pulled at him, wanted him to join it. With a final ghastly burp of bubbles, the Mafia don of dons was sucked beneath the surface until only one finger barely poked through the slime-coated surface. It was as if the sea of death, as vast and all-consuming as it was, could take only a portion of a man of such darkness and evil. It would take it days to fully digest his flesh in its foul, poison-dripping jaws.

  But Stone didn’t wait around to look at Scalzanni’s final gurglings. Even as he released the sick load into the air, he threw himself to the ground and rolled three times to the side. Not a second too soon, for as they saw their boss head to sea, the torpedoes opened fire, blazing away with both .45s as fast as they could pull the triggers. But shooting is one thing—hitting another. Stone, who had come to one knee and crouched low in the darkness, could see them both easily silhouetted by the lights of the mall behind them. He sighted up first one, dead center of the Cro-Magnon face, and pulled the trigger, then shifted the Ruger a fraction of an inch and fired again. Elapsed time—.76 of a second.

  Forty feet away, two faceless corpses toppled over dead before they hit the cold ground. Stone rose from the dirt and walked forward edgily, the Ruger held out in front of him ready to spit hellfire. But there was no need. Not for these two, anyway. They were already sinking into the ground. Slowly, of course. But then, the dead are very patient.

  Chapter Twenty

  The pitbull walked over to Stone, snorting up a storm and spitting out a spray of red as it tried to rid its mouth of the foul taste. The taste of Scalzanni. For the blood had spewed out the mafioso’s severed wrist and covered the animal’s face from the tip of its nose to its neck. The dog looked like some sort of Darwinian nightmare, the first Canine redfacus in the world.