The Damn Disciples Read online

  “Jesus, Jesus,” Smythe kept mumbling under his breath. The rapid-fire events of the evening were apparently a little too much for him to take in one sitting.

  “Come on,” Stone said, reholstering the Ruger and jumping down from the rock. They followed behind, their stomachs growling as they approached the game. Excaliber had stopped and was pointing at the buck. Smythe and Damaged got down on their knees and leaned over to begin drinking, lapping at the blood that was collecting below it.

  “No!” Stone shouted, pulling both of their shoulders back so they didn’t have a chance to drink. “Men do not drink blood like animals! We will cook the buck, and eat like civilized beings—not savages.” He knew they were incredibly hungry, could hear the stomachs making all kinds of gurgling sounds. But still, they had to learn certain things. At least as long as Stone was on the scene, the men would not drink up blood like a hyena on their hands and knees.

  It took them about fifteen minutes to drag the carcass back to camp. And Stone was glad to see, when they pulled the thing into the Broken Ones’ village, that the rest of them had just about finished the roof and walls of the hut. They continued to pour unending amounts of mud over it, not really knowing when to stop. The mud would just protect them a little longer from being washed off by each storm.

  All of their eyes went wild with hunger as the meat was hauled in. But again Stone kept them back, and first skinned, drained, and then butchered the animal, showing them all how to do it. They watched, fascinated and starving, as his razor-sharp Bowie blade ripped through the meat as if he was in the back room of a supermarket. With the fire higher now, Stone took a whole bunch of select steaks and organs and slammed them onto spits over the flames. The sound of twenty or so stomachs gurgling ravenously by the fire was not the greatest appetizer. Nor were the whinings of the pit bull, which looked at the sizzling meat with the expression of a priest spotting God in the very heavens.

  After a few minutes, when the meat was cooked enough to kill any disease, bacteria, whatever, Stone gave them the go signal. It was as though a stampede of lions had been let into the arena to devour the Christians. He grabbed his own stick up and barely got out of the way in time. And if the gurglings had been a little disgusting to Stone, the rippings and tearings, the splatterings, the faces coated with blood and half-chewed meat, like werewolves at Gristedes, made Stone turn away and chew his smoking ribs behind a tree.

  ELEVEN

  When Stone got up the next morning at the stroke of dawn, the first thing he had them all do was clear out of their newly constructed home, which in the dim light of the coming day looked almost respectable. Then it was exercise time, to get their watery blood sloshing around inside them. They groaned and complained, but they more or less followed along. Even the legless cripples slapped their hands together and rolled around on the ground trying to get into the spirit of the whole thing. And that, after all, was what mattered. Spirit.

  Stone could see, as the burning scalp of the sun poked up over the tree line, that they already looked slightly healthier. A touch more flesh on the bones after all the meat they’d eaten last night. Half the buck was gone, and it had been big. Still, he had no illusions that he had done anything more than stave off their decline into complete savagery. He headed over to the fire and saw that at least Smythe had kept it going. He and a few others were still slicing up pieces of the beast, toasting them over the flames on spits as Stone had shown them. They seemed to have a hunger that had no bounds. He understood why.

  Stone made an instant decision and went to his bike, took out a small bundle, and walked back over to Smythe, who stood up as he approached.

  “I’m giving you this, man,” Stone said, handing the skinny fellow a .38 snub-nosed revolver that he had stashed in one of the boxes on the back of the bike—just in case. Just in case was here now. “And a box of ammo. That’s almost a hundred shots. Make ’em count. You can keep this bunch fed for a while, anyway. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “I hear you, Stone,” Smythe replied with a look of awe as he took the weapon. With this he could get them much food, could protect them at night. It changed their whole world in an instant. From one of constant fear and hunger to one of possibility, however minute it might be.

  “Do you know how to use it?” Stone asked, not wanting to embarrass the guy, but not wanting to leave him unable to operate the thing.

  “Yes, yes, I do, Stone. I had a pistol many years ago, on my father’s ranch. Before … before—”

  “Easy, easy,” Stone said, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder. Smythe strapped the holster on around his waist and took out the pistol. He aimed it at a rotten stump of a log about forty feet off and squeezed the trigger. The gun erupted with a sharp burp and the Broken Ones around him pulled back, oohing and aching in fear and excitement. The slug hit the bottom of the stump and sent a whole little cloud of ground-up wood into the air. Not bad.

  “You should be able to bag something,” Stone said. “Now remember, save your ammo. And have the other men flush out the prey like the dog did. Send them into the woods, make noise, bang things, whatever. And then wait in a field outside. You can’t miss. It’s what hunters have been doing since caveman days.”

  “Thank you, Stone,” Smythe said in a whisper as he slid the gun back into the holster. He had felt like a piece of dried-up spit just the morning before. And now.… This one man had changed things beyond dreams. It was impossible, and yet—

  “Just one favor for me, ” Stone said as he took the man around a be so. the others couldn’t hear. There was no sense in trusting anyone more than he had to. It seemed unlikely that there would be spies among these. But the one thing Stone had learned about the new America was, you never knew what was going to happen next, and that enemies lurked behind the softest of flowers.

  “I want to leave my bike here. We’ll push it back out of sight into the woods. But I need you to guard it, keep an eye on it, make sure none of your brain-cleansed pals here get a hankering to start chewing on the leather or something.”

  “No, Stone!” Smythe said firmly. “Those days are gone. I will not let these men, as you say, be less than men. At least while I’m here. And this is here.” He patted the gun. “I’ll watch the bike, sure. Me and Damaged can cart it off.”

  “I’d rather keep it out of town,” Stone explained. “My ace in the hole. Because I have to go into what you all came out of. My sister is in there.”

  “God help her,” Smythe whispered, crossing himself with his hands. “And you, friend,” he added softly as he put out his hand and gripped Stone’s arm.

  “Come on, dog,” Stone yelled, whistling for the mutt, which was needless to say over on the meat line for break-fast. The animal was chomping down the meat as fast as it could be cooked up. The man who was doling out the sizzling meat didn’t dare refuse. Not with these almond eyes focused on him. The dog swallowed down its last helping fast when it heard Stone whistle, and then grabbed another piece that must have weighed a good five pounds. The pit bull dragged it along as if it just happened to be attached to its mouth, and came up alongside Stone.

  “We’re moving, dog,” he said, looking down as the animal chewed wildly away. Stone took one last look at the chomping encampment of mental cases as they sat around the fire. Well, he’d done all that he fucking could. He wasn’t God. He saw Smythe and Damaged taking the bike off into the woods as he turned and started down the back road toward La Junta. He hoped he could trust them. But Stone had basically been trusting his intuition up until now. There was no sense in stopping now. At least he was still alive. Which was more than a lot of men could say.

  He walked quickly along the dusty road as the sun rose up into the sky like a flaming basketball searching for a new position among the high puffy clouds. The dog followed behind, still gulping down every last meat flake it could. They walked for nearly an hour and a half at a fast gait. Wildlife rushed off as they approached. They didn’t pass any cars. Just one
of the same walking-dead type, his clothes hanging in shreds over him as he walked by, his eyes focused on infinity. Maybe the poor bastard would find the others down the road; if not … well, maybe it was better to just go out fast. Before you discovered you no longer had a mind.

  Then the town of La Junta was suddenly right before him as he come over a slope and looked down. It was spread out over acres, mostly low-built structures, all crude log-cabin-type construction. A few larger buildings here and there, including a nearly-four-story-high, very elaborately and peculiarly decorated one, like some sort of mix between American Pioneer and twelfth-century Hindu. Stone headed down the slope, a little more slowly now, as he wanted to take in everything carefully. There wasn’t going to be room for mistakes here. He pulled Excaliber close to his leg, telling the dog in no uncertain terms to stay close, stay cool, and be ready to go for the jugular.

  He had barely set foot in the town when Stone did a triple take. For coming around the side of a log building was an elephant. It was pulling an immense tree behind it that was attached to a chain wrapped around its trunk. Excaliber made a strange sound deep in its throat. It had never seen anything so big. Stone and the canine waited until the thundering beast had hauled the multiton tree past them and down a side street. Stone could see already that the people here were in better shape than the Broken Ones out on the road. At least on the outside. These had pink cheeks, and their clothes weren’t torn. But their eyes, as he walked by more of them, were just as vacuous. Perhaps more so. For these were all smiling. Dumb painted-on smiles sat on every face like the superexaggerated expressions of the old smile buttons, the demise of which was to Stone one of the positive benefits of the collapse of American civilization.

  “Good day. May your aura be always blue,” a man said as he passed by, tilting his head slightly as if bowing. His eyes blazed with good cheer, but Stone could see it was all a lie. There was nothing behind those eyes or the lips. Just a recording somewhere in what was left of the man’s brain, telling him to utter the words.

  “Good day,” Stone replied, “and your aura too.” Everyone he passed nodded with the same little tilt of the head, the same words, everything. It was as though they had come from the same mold. Every one of them. He came to a corner, turned, and walked down another block—and encountered the same greeting from every man and woman he passed. He saw two more elephants, which seemed to do all the heavy work around the place; Stone couldn’t see a single motorized vehicle. The citizens all wore the same sort of gray suit, sort of like the old Nehru style of the sixties, with simple lines and cut-off collar. It made them all appear to be robots, like something out of Red Guard China. Every one of them seemed so alike in clothing and manner it was spooky.

  Suddenly there were three of them blocking his path. They didn’t act menacing, but clearly wanted to have a few words with him before he took another step. These had robes on, a brownish-red color, and were clearly of a higher rank than the others. It wasn’t that they didn’t look spaced out as well, but their eyes had at least a glint more intelligence in them, their mouths moved a little more freely. Apparently this Yasgar had different levels of mind control. Only problem was, the more control, the less mind. So he must have had to compromise. That meant that the more intelligent ones might be more open to persuasion—or threats. Stone filed the information away under “Ultra Important.” And promptly forgot it.

  “Hello, welcome to the Town of the Perfect Aura,” one of them said. “It is a lovely day, isn’t it?” The three strained faces looked at Stone questioningly.

  “Yes, yes, it sure as hell is a lovely thing to be here in this lovely town on a lovely day like this,” Stone replied with as exaggerated a smile as the others had. The three men tried to smile even wider than he, and Stone wondered whether their mouths were going to split.

  “And what might your purpose be here in our fine town, stranger?” the same gray robe asked.

  “Oh—just vacationing.” Stone smiled back. “Heard you had some real good guru or something here, preaching a whole lot of gospel. I’m a man of God, so I come down from the mountains—to see just what was going on. Any man who preaches the Lord’s work—well, that man is someone I want to hear. Amen,” he added, looking down as if in prayer.

  “So you’ve come to hear about the Perfect Aura. That is a wonderful thing,” the man said. “We have Al experienced the healing pureness of the Aura, have tasted the nectar of transformation. It is a miraculous thing indeed. You must come to our Ceremony of the Golden Elixir tonight at the Auric Temple. All are welcome, all strangers are welcome.”

  “Even animals,” one of them added sweetly, as if syrup were dripping from his tight lips. He reached down to pet Excaliber, who let out a menacing growl and backed off, his fur rising up slightly. The dog clearly didn’t like any of this crew, not one bit. It didn’t know what was wrong. It didn’t particularly care what was wrong. Just that there was something out of sync with them. Like a broken car that you wouldn’t sit in from the sheer sounds of its malfunctioning engine.

  “Ah, isn’t he cute,” one of them said. “Our Guru loves animals. And they love him. They flock to him like the legendary St. Francis of Asissi.”

  “Oh, isn’t that nice,” Stone said, hoping he wouldn’t puke over all these “Dices and wonderfuls.” “I do hope your Guru will be at the temple tonight so I can meet him personally,” Stone said, reminding himself to make sure his .44 and autofire 9mm Beretta were fully loaded.

  “Yes, the Guru and the Priest of Transformation will be there,” one of them said, laughing as if the thought of his absence were completely absurd. “He must be there. That is the whole ceremony. It is he who leads us into the purity of the mind, the nectar of the flesh.”

  “Sounds great, I’m telling you. I’m glad I came down here already. It’s just what I’ve been looking for up in them mountains. Nectar of the flesh, paradise of the brain. Now, those are the kind of things a practical mountain boy like me would pay a pretty penny to get his grubby hands on.” Stone laughed, the cultees laughed, even the dog seemed to laugh, letting out a little bark and stretching its own mouth a little farther back. Never had so many lying smiles been flashed so intensely by so many mouths in such a small space. It would have made the Guinness World Book of Lies—if there were such things anymore.

  TWELVE

  Everywhere he walked, Stone was greeted by the smiling, blank-eyed faces. There were other outsiders around town, Stone could see as he moved deeper toward the center of town. La Junta had a thriving salt and fur business along with a number of other small stores. Apparently there was a certain amount of free commerce in and out of the place. But by God, the cultees sure as hell came on strong to all passersby.

  “Your aura needs cleaning,” a couple of bright faces said as Stone walked on.

  “Thanks—I’ll drop it off at the laundry,” he answered without stopping.

  “Happiness is just an inch away,” a pimply-faced teen spoke up in front of him as Stone tried to avoid him.

  “And nirvana is just a silly millimeter longer.” Stone smirked back. But he didn’t slow down. Once you slowed for a cultee, they were on you like a wolf on a corpse. First the guts, then the brain and heart. They attacked from every direction. Even the dog let out a growl now and again as they approached, which seemed to work quite well as a defensive maneuver. For these here, like the men out in the woods, didn’t seem to like dogs too much.

  As he walked along the main street, Stone was amazed at how many little stores there were. More than most towns these days had, to say the least. These people sure as hell were an industrious lot. Suddenly he heard some drums, some kind of commotion up about a block ahead, and he walked a little faster. A crowd was gathering as he came up and he heeled Excaliber in closer to his leg, not wanting there to be any trouble. It was drums—of a sort—huge tin washtubs upside down, being banged on with long sticks. It made quite a sound. But it was the sight that impressed him.

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sp; For down a ramp in front of one of the larger log buildings, an elephant was being led out by one of the robed figures. Stone watched in amazement as he felt the pit bull tense up by his leg. The animal didn’t like things that were a hundred times bigger than it was. It made it feel insecure. The huge beast was led right up to the center of the square, where Stone could see as he craned his neck over the now-crowded street in front of him there was a man down on his knees kneeling in front of a large wooden block. Stone started getting a sick feeling in his stomach.

  “This man stole from the Temple of the Perfect Aura,” a robed figure was bellowing out as he paced around the kneeling, crying man. “He took what belonged to Guru Yasgar—and to the entire community of believers.” There were murmurs and chatter among the crowd, about half of whom were cultees, the other half outsiders, at least as far as Stone could make out.

  “He took the Golden Nectar—and sold it to outsiders as a crude beverage to get them drunk,” the robed man, whose face Stone couldn’t quite see as the oversize brown robe kept flowing around him, billowing around his face and body so he was always in shadowy motion, just a blur without real features. “Nothing can be so blasphemous—other than an attack on the Guru himself. For this.” The robed man paused and held up both hands dramatically. He wanted the crowd to get a good show. This was, after all, for their benefit. Should some other madman get the idea to steal anything—even a paper clip from the Temple—they would meet the fate that was quickly approaching this hapless sobbing slob.