The Damn Disciples Page 4

  It was going to be the craziest piece of surgery mankind had ever performed on itself. And if there was such a thing as the AMA (American Medical Association) anymore, which there wasn’t, they would doubtless have sued the living shit out of him. On the other hand, since he was going to do it to himself, if he fucked up there would be no one to sue. Or something like that. His head was getting dizzier.

  “Come on, Dr. Kildare,” Stone mocked himself, trying to get his courage up. He set the video camera in place so that he could see everything clearly on a TV monitor on a table to the right side about a yard away. He proceeded to cut the whole side of his pants leg to the thigh so the bleeding mess was exposed. It was worse than he had thought. Jesus, it was hard to look at. His own flesh—all purple and fucked up like it was ready for the grave. He wished suddenly he’d taken more time to treat it days before. But he’d been on the run—there had been no time. And now he was running out of said quantity; the last few grains were suspended tremblingly on the edge of the hourglass of Martin Stone’s life.

  The pain was too much as Stone, sitting up, tried to slice away at the poisoned flesh, just above the knee on the inside of the thigh. The skin was clearly dead, some of it with a brown, even blackish, appearance. He tried to cut into it, but the combined pain of the broken bone plus the slicing was too much. Stone fell backward onto the table, where at least the broken bone seemed to be relieved from the pressure. He reached over for the mechanical hands he had set up. His father had known a man might have to operate on himself. For in the new world, there was not a hospital still operating, not a single soul that one could depend on for anything.

  Stone fitted his hands inside the input section of the de-vice, gloves that his fingers could manipulate easily. The futuristic-looking aluminum gloves had wires and gears that fed into a pair of mechanical steel hands attached to long robotic arms that could swivel and turn in any direction. They had been originally developed for radioactive-material handling, but over the years had been used for numerous kinds of technologies. It had been simple enough for his father to obtain an advanced model of the species. Stone tried the gloves, manipulating them a few times as he turned his head to the side and watched on the TV monitor—all in living gory color. He could see the leg just sitting there waiting for more of its blood to flow. He made one of the mechanical hands reach down and take a large cotton cloth from the table and dip it in a bowl of alcohol. Then he moved it up and down the gangrenous area, scraping away all the surface rot. He winced as he moved his hand within the glove. The pain was amazing, even though he thought he was prepared for it.

  With the top layers of rot gone, he pushed the close-up button on the wireless video transmitter that sat next to him on the operating table. The camera zoomed in, and he could see now that maybe it wasn’t. as bad as he had thought. The actual dead tissue was about as big as a silver dollar the rest was bruised badly, but still seemed to be on the side of the living. Stone made the mechanical hand lift a scalpel and, letting out a long breath, he dug in. He screamed. And screamed again. But never took his eyes from the video monitor—or allowed himself to pass out. Painkilling drugs were out of the question, as they would dull his manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination, which were vital if there was any chance of success.

  After about ten seconds of cutting here and there, he could see that he had excised all of the black muck. He cut around the edges once more. And again let out a long howl like a stuck dog. And for a second he thought he heard Excaliber answering far off from the kitchen. When he finished cutting and once again examined the area, he took a large cotton swab, had the mechanical hand dip it in hydrogen peroxide, and painted the whole area. It stung like a motherfucker. Then he smeared antibiotic salves over the whole thing and placed a thick piece of gauze down on it covered over with tape.

  That was the easy part. Now was the hard. Gripping the HyperBurlic steel leg band with both mechanical hands, he opened it up and put it beneath the broken part of the thigh. Pulling the two pieces of steel band around, he attached them in groves so they locked together. Looking in the monitor, he moved the mechanical hand to the top of the band, where a handle turned a screw gear. He turned it. And the pain was a tidal wave that swept over his entire soul. But he turned and kept on turning, looking through teary eyes at the screen, making sure he was putting the pressure in the right place so the broken bone would set into proper alignment. Still, he had to do a bunch of yelling to get the thing tightened the full three turns that the computer had dictated.

  When it was all done and he lay there breathing hard, Stone allowed himself to rest. The operation was complete. The rest was up to God. And as he started to try to rise up to head to the bedroom, it was as if all his energy suddenly drained down into the operating table he was lying on. And he fell into a pit that was red and had jagged cutting edges.

  FOUR

  When he awoke he was still lying on the operating table—in a pool of his own blood. He snapped open his stuck eyes in horror, thinking perhaps he was new bleeding to death. But as he sat up, Stone saw that it was all from the operation. He looked down at the leg. The part he had sliced out throbbed like a war drum, but the bandage around it, although stained with an initial flout’ of blood, was not wet now. He had succeeded—momentarily. Whether or not he had terminated the gangrene threat he’d find out soon enough. The band of steel that was tightened around the break had pretty much numbed out the whole area with the pressure it was putting on. The computer had said the band should stay on for forty-eight hours so the bones could begin knitting properly —then be followed by a cast. Right! He’d just check into the local emergency room.

  Stone swung his legs over the side of the table and stepped down gingerly onto the floor. Not too bad. He could even put a little weight on the broken leg, though it didn’t feel great. He grabbed a crutch from the wall and walked around testing it as the banks of computers beeped out pulsing streams of information around him. He cleaned up the operating area a little, at least getting rid of the bloody rags, and then headed out down toward the living quarters.

  He gasped as he rounded the bend and looked into the kitchen. The pit bull’s food had long since vanished, but it looked as though the dog had helped itself to more. A lot more. The mutt had somehow learned to open the cabinets above the sinks where the cans and what all were stored. And had pulled down a large number of them, which lay bitten up around the floor. The dog was nowhere in sight.

  “Son of a bitch,” Stone muttered, walking along on the crutch as little waves of pain shot up the leg. At least he didn’t feel as feverish. That was a good sign. He hit the living quarters and glanced around, still not seeing a sign of the animal, though the place looked as if a tornado had gone through it. Whether the animal had had a bad stomach after all the feasting, or had just been exuberant and wanted a night on the town, Stone didn’t know. And it didn’t really matter what its motivation, just the results. The couches were on their sides, pillows all over the place. The two large rugs—one Persian, the other plush white fur—had been chewed and rolled around so that dog hair coated their surfaces like a sprinkling of volcanic ash.

  Stone saw a motion from beneath an upturned armchair and angrily hobbled over. He kicked the chair aside and there, bloated as a bloodworm, with bloodshot eyes and hangdog expression of the highest order, Excaliber stared back at him. Its stomach hung way out on the front side of it as if the damn thing had swallowed a boulder.

  “What the hell do you have to say for yourself, dog?” Stone hissed with barely repressed rage. The dog just whined a little sound, as though it could hardly get up the strength to even do that. Its hanging eyes seemed to be begging for Ala-Seltzer or some damn thing that would ease it out of its culinary hangover. Twenty pounds of food crammed into a ninety-pound frame was not exactly the way to feel good the next morning. Stone walked around, turning things upright, kicking the coffee table back in place. His mother’s ghost hovered over the place commanding him t
o tidy up. She would be having a shit fit, Stone thought darkly, if she were here now. When they had lived together she would scold him for leaving a book out on a couch. The dog had sent the slowly deteriorating scene in the bunker right over the edge.

  But whatever thoughts Stone had about getting the place in at least less chaotic form were suddenly interrupted by a beeping sound that came blasting over the bunker’s PA.

  “EMERGENCY TRANSMISSION, EMERGENCY TRANSMISSION. COME TO COMPUTER ROOM. EMERGENCY TRANSMISSION.” Stone muttered a few choice curses under his breath, wondering if he was ever going to get even a second’s rest, and dropped the pillow he was lifting back down, where it settled with a little rush of feathers where the dog had chewed some good-size holes, apparently hallucinating that the thing was a chicken during the course of its food nightmares.

  He headed back down to the communications room and slammed himself down in one of the seats in front of the console that was screaming out all kinds of emergency signals. Stone pressed the Play button and sat back. His father’s equipment constantly monitored all frequencies, searching for CB, radio—anything it could find. Which wasn’t a hell of a lot. It was also coded through the computer, to immediately pick up on key words. Martin Stone was one of them. And Stone could see immediately why it had sent out the alert.

  “Martin Stone, Stone, come in,” a voice was saying over the loudspeaker on the wall. “This is La Junta calling Martin Stone. We have your sister, Stone. Do you hear? She is our prisoner. We are willing to talk terms. Come to La Junta. Calling Stone, Martin Stone ” That was it, just repeated over and over as if it was on a tape loop. It didn’t tell him a hell of a lot. But it told him enough. His sister was once again hanging to this life by her fingernails.

  FIVE

  They danced naked in the moonlight. The full moon that at down on them like an illuminating fire of passion and madness. Women, dozens of them, undulated and writhed like the legions of the possessed. Their bodies were covered with sweat as they danced around a large cleared field, their firm breasts swinging and rising and falling as they spun and leaped into the air to unheard music. The moonlight was strong, brilliant as it poured down over their weaving bodies, bathing them in its magic light. For countless centuries folk tales had spoken of the Moon Madness, the hypnotic trance into which people fell, under its spell—the strange things they might do.

  Though the women danced in the moonlight in rigorous pulsations, their faces were without joy or pleasure of the slightest kind. Their faces were dead, frozen. More like the features of stone than the living, the desiring. The contrast was strange between the wild gyrations and the flat expressions. Not that one of them had the consciousness to notice such things. For they were without thought. Were only what the Guru told them. He was their mentor, their leader, their god. And he played with them like puppets, his own personal playthings that he could do with as he wished.

  Guru Yasgar stood on a crude platform made of branches at one side of the field and exhorted them on. He wore a full black robe and raised his hands high, as if commanding the moon itself. He was all. He was the great one. To be feared, to be obeyed at once. To give one’s life for. As many had.

  Guru Yasgar waved his hand to the right and some servants came forward holding large gourds of a golden-hot nectar. The women stopped only long enough to drink huge slugs of the stuff—five, six gulps until it was running down their chins, down their golden bodies. Then they rejoined the dancing, tossing their heads from side to side as they flew wildly about. They were like wild animals, and as the night grew deeper the Guru screamed out magic incantations, spinning his arms in the air. The women grew even more frenzied and clawed at each other and themselves in a rising madness. They bit and punched as they danced, all trying to leap higher than the others, as if trying to grab the very moon from the sky and make love to it. For their eyes were filled with an unquenchable desire, their lips parted, begging for release, release. But Yasgar only played with them. He was the cat—and they were his mice.

  “Faster! Faster!” Yasgar commanded. For the frenzy was not wild enough, the blood not flowing freely enough to satisfy his cravings, his bloodlust. He pulled a horsewhip from within his robe and snapped it into the air above their heads so that it made a thunderous crack.

  “Dance, you bitches, dance!” Yasgar screamed, his black rat eyes as dark as pits within the fat jowled face, the whip cracking out again and again, ever closer to their soft spinning flesh. Now they moved faster. Fear was the great motivator. Fear was what made the world go round. What made empires rise—and fall.

  Guru Yasgar’s little empire had begun when he was just a kid. A snot-nosed six-year-old who saw that his mental powers, his will, were stronger than the other children’s. It was an easy thing to intimidate them, make them give him their lunches, change, even books and sweaters. He rarely had to fight to back up his aggressiveness. But when he did, those who challenged him wished they hadn’t. For the child was like a wild beast when he grew angry—biting, spitting, using any weapon at hand. And he would hurt them. Bones would be broken, eyes would come free from their sockets, teeth from their fleshy grooves.

  As the child grew older and entered puberty, he discovered that his willpower worked just as well over the opposite sex, too. In no time he had a little harem going and was pimping to the other high school kids. His girls brought him all the money—for already his wrath was something not to be brought down on oneself. By the age of fifteen, he had killed one of them. She had made the mistake of stealing from him. Her body was found floating in a nearby river a few months later. Her head was never recovered.

  The young Yasgar’s greatest idol during these formative years was Charles Manson. The way Manson had used his own willpower and the manipulation of sex was like a Red Sea Scroll for the criminally evolving teen. And once he discovered that he could get control over groups of men as well—by using the girls to seduce them, by having orgies that he directed, as Manson had done—the world was his. The great director—of human lives. A role he found most pleasing. By the age of twenty, he had an arrest sheet five yards long. But the longest the cops could ever put him away for was six months. And even then he got out in two for good behavior. Which he set up by having two of his fifteen-year-old “virgins” sleep with the warden. It was pitiful how easy it was to ascend in this world of weak minds and even weaker flesh.

  But the law was closing in on him on the East Coast, to which up until now he had confined his operations. So be-coming Guru Yasgar, he moved out to Colorado, where he knew there were a number of cults, communes, off in the hills. The perfect place to let his brand of cancer breed. He bought nearly a thousand acres in the southeastern part of the state, below La Junta. Starting out with an initial two dozen or so followers, within five years Yasgar had hundreds. And having virtual slave labor, he had been able to build—a city. A minicity of rough-hewn wood cabins and a three-story palace, a bizarre oriental-looking monstrosity of Guru Yasgar’s own twisted design.

  It wasn’t hard to attract more and more followers. Men and women crave sex. Society so represses the animal urges and instincts, male and female are so embattled and pushed apart, that Yasgar could manipulate it all to his own dark ends. The orgies grew ever larger, until it was as if Yasgar were directing an epic rather than something of human scale. Yet still he wasn’t satisfied, still wanted to make his “cleansing” process, which basically brainwashed his new recruits into the ways of his cult—the Perfect Aura—faster, more efficient. Wanted his control to be total and absolute. Wanted their submission to be a hundred percent.

  He began experimenting with drugs—mixtures of heroin, cocaine, Demerol, pentothal, and other mind-altering concoctions. Drugs used on schizophrenics, on horses, on elephants. And though some died in his attempts to create just the right mixture, at last success was his. With this Golden Elixir—and the super speeded up brain-“cleansing” techniques he had developed over the years—Yasgar could take a man or woman and
bring them from the outside to total slavehood within three days. He challenged any other guru or warlord to meet that demanding statistic. Not that there were any newsletters so they could all exchange brain recipes. But he knew his power. He proved it every minute of every day. And that was what mattered. That a living god be worshipped by more and more of humanity. Numbers mattered. Perhaps someday the entire world would be his.

  Yasgar looked down at them, at the beauteous flesh twisting around, every part of their bodies moving in a different direction as if they were quicksilver, were streams of rain. He looked at their nubile flesh, their perfect breasts. And began choosing which ones he would have tonight, would play with back in his “palace.”

  “Dance,” he screamed out in commanding deep tones, like the very voice of a living god. “Dance or die,“ he chanted, cracking out the long bullwhip, which danced above their heads like a wind-blown tendril beneath the ghost moon, -whipping ever closer, taking little bites out of thighs and breasts, cheeks, shoulders, buttocks. He was maddened with sick desire now, beneath the robe. He felt flushed with the supreme control of the women, their flesh broken and bleeding beneath his hands. It was the highest of pleasures that a dark god could feel on this earth.

  SIX

  Stone had just one problem—aside from a broken leg that might or might not have to be amputated and a fever of a 102 that wouldn’t break. He’d lost all his firepower and his Harley 1200cc bike when he’d been caught in an avalanche and swept right off the side of a mountain. He wasn’t about to venture out into the wilds without a miniwarwagon. But that meant building one up—almost from scratch. In spite of the pain that kept streaming up and down the leg, he headed out to the garage to see just what the hell was there to work with.