He awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up like little quills. Where
was he? How long had he been asleep? It seemed as if he had just been in a black funnel, a storm of darkness deep and twisting,
swirling down into unfathomable regions. He knew that if he hadn’t awakened right then—just a moment before the cloud swallowed
him, a second before the funnel swept him up in its wispy clenching jaws—that he would never have awoken. For there was blood
in the air. Murder all around him.
He looked around sharply, trying to ascertain his location. It was night but the full sky of stars spread out across the heavens
like a mess of spilled marbles and a thick bloated moon sitting directly overhead he could see clearly. There was rubble everywhere
and bodies. Suddenly he remembered the explosion that he had set, and then the storm of
smoking rock and dismembered flesh falling from the black sky; all that was left of the Dwarf’s fortress and vacation retreat
for the high-rolling criminals of America. A small smile sketched its way across his ash-coated face. At least he had accomplished
something in this hellhole, tipped the scales of blackness and light ever so slightly to the side away from the darkness.
It all came back to him—the truck he had escaped in, then the roaring eruption, the truckload of whores who dug him out. He
had just put his head down to rest for a moment, and… he must have just passed out on the spot. The whores were nowhere to
be seen. Just bodies all around him as if the sky had rained flesh, had cried blood.
He heard a noise off in the shadows, then another and the smile vanished from his mouth like a fish darting back into the
darker waters. Figures were rushing around the debris like rats, bent over, furtive. They mouthed obscene laughs as they searched
the dead bodies for booty, rifling through the bloodstained clothes with quick, filthy fingers, grabbing everything that was
still usable—boots, jewelry, knives, whatever. Martin Stone dropped back down to the center of the small explosion-created
crater he was lying in and watched with drawn breath.
Suddenly he heard a coarse voice perhaps ten yards off. “Found me a good one,” it yelled. Then there was the slicing sound
of a knife sawing through flesh. Stone raised his head slowly and peered out over the rise… and almost puked up what little
food was still sitting in his stomach from his last meal two days before. For one of the scavengers was cutting off the ears
of a body on the ground, its long dead hands clasped together in a prayer of rigor mortis. He cut away with a long hunting
knife with the expertise of someone who
had carried out the action numerous times, rising with the two red dripping appendages in his hand.
“Got me two more,” the scabby creature yelled to his pals, who were busy on their hands and knees filling burlap sacks with
everything they could find that would be of use to their miserable lives. Stone could see through the moonlight filtering
down through high curtains of cloud that the man was hideously ugly, his face misshapen and scarred as if he had been through
a meat grinder more than once. And he saw something else—a necklace of ears around the scavenger’s neck, shrunken to the size
of dried apricots, hard and brown. There must have been a hundred of them, extending clear around the man’s stubbled throat.
The human slime held the bloody ears up in the air examining the newest additions to his necklace of human flesh by the rays
of the neon moon.
“Jesus Christ,” Stone mumbled under his breath. So many people had died to create the bastard’s grotesque jewelry. It wasn’t
how he felt like ending up, that was for damned sure. He felt down to his waist, reaching frantically for his .44—but it was
gone. His knife was missing too. The whores had stripped him of everything that could kill. He searched around with darting
bloodshot eyes for anything that he could use to fight with. For the corpse strippers were drawing closer by the second, and
they were heading right toward him.
“Lookee here,” the ear cutter laughed out with sputtering glee through his half toothless mouth. “Another! Got me another
set. Damn, if I ain’t gonna need to start a new necklace soon.” He bent down over the body of a woman, and sliced down hard
twice. Two more ears fell free, the gaping holes in the skull gushing out a red liquid ooze that coated the slicer’s filth-coated
boots. But he didn’t seem to notice
or care as he moved ahead searching for more. Tonight he was in paradise—a Garden of Eden of death.
Stone dropped down flat on his back as the scavenger walked up to the dusty crater and saw him lying there.
“Look at this one; don’t even look hurt,” the cutter yelled to his pals, who moved across the field of bodies like locusts
stripping a forest. “His ears are perfect… like uncut diamonds… big ones too. This is my goddamned night. Lady fucking luck
is looking over my shoulder.” He kneeled down and raised the knife to bring it down on Stone’s right ear, but before the long
blade could descend, the would-be corpse threw a handful of dust into the man’s face. Coughing and momentarily blinded, the
cutter fell backwards, landing on his ass as he tried to wipe the grit free from his eyes with snot-covered cuffs.
Stone was upon him like a leopard on an impala. He kicked the slime in the face, catching him directly under the chin and
the big man’s mouth erupted in a spurt of blood. Stone grabbed the gnarled hand and twisted it hard, grabbing the knife as
it fell free. But the others had heard the struggle and suddenly appeared out of the shadows, surrounding him. Without hesitation
Stone jumped behind the ear cutter, grabbed a handful of greasy, lice-infested hair, and pulled back hard. He rammed the blade
edge against the Adam’s apple and pulled the man to his feet.
“Back off, slime, or he’s dead,” Stone screamed, suddenly able to see as he rose just how many of this happy crew there were.
Too many! There must have been nearly a dozen of them, their burlap bags filled with rotting treasures as they stared with
wide open mouths at him. Corpses weren’t supposed to fight back. But if that’s what tonight’s little game was going to be,
so be it. With something approaching the pleasurable look a gourmet gets on his face
when he sits down to a meal of steaming escargots, they gently set their bags down on the debris-covered ground and pulled
out an assortment of weapons—knives, axes, meat hooks—to greet their uninvited guest.
Stone gulped hard and pushed ear cutter forward, keeping the knife right against the jugular, ready to dig in deep if the
bastard made the slightest move. But he didn’t. Like all scum, he was brave only when he had the upper hand. Stone prayed
that the man was the leader of the group, or at least in the upper echelon, or the rest of them would only see it as an opportunity
to get yet more treasure by taking them both out.
But apparently earman was high in the pecking order, for the smiles vanished from the scavenger crew’s face as they realized
that their pal was in big trouble.
“What should we do, Ear?” the scavenger closest to Stone, with a pockmarked face, nose half eaten away as if it had worms
in it, screamed in something approaching hysteria.
“Just… just take it easy, boys,” the prisoner stuttered back. “This man don’t mean no harm, do you, fellow? He just thought
I meant him harm, which I didn’t. How the hell was I supposed to know you wasn’t dead?” he beseeched Stone. “Just lemme go
and you can walk. I swear.”
“Kill him,” one of the corpse strippers yelled, coming toward Stone from the right holding a machete in his raised hand. “If
we all charge, we’ll cut the bastard up into ant food.”
“No! No!” Stone’s prisoner yelled back even louder. “Don’t one of you make a move, you hear me. If you do—and he cuts me—I’ll
get you, if I have to come back from the grave.” Such was the awe in which the others held Ear that they stopped in their
tracks and made room for Stone,
who moved slowly through their ranks, gripping his stinking Get-Out-of-Jail-Free-Card with every bit of strength in his sore
arms. The ranks opened like the Red Sea parting and though Stone could see by their grinding jaws and wild eyes that there
was nothing they wanted more on this earth than to say hello to his kidneys with their blades, they held back.
He was just beginning to think he might actually make it when Ear decided to make a move. He grabbed Stone’s knife hand with
both of his steel fists and bit down hard with the few teeth that remained in his mouth, the cracked fangs sinking deep into
the back of Stone’s hand. Stone let out a howl of pain but he didn’t drop the blade. Ripping the hand free of the man’s jaws,
he slammed the knife back again, ripping it across the thick throat. The flesh parted like butter as the razor-sharp edge
dug in deep, cutting muscle and artery in a flash. Stone pushed the dying thing away from him as it spewed out a waterfall
of red, the mouth gurgling out a wet sickening sound as blood gushed from between his lips instead of words. He fell forward,
hands wrapped around his own throat as if he was trying to hold it all back in.
Out of the frying pan into hell. As if the cutting of Ear’s throat were the signal to charge, the rest of the slime rushed
toward Stone with murder in their black eyes. Stone ran straight toward the closest one, remembering his late father’s, Major
Clayton Stone’s words: “Never run away; charge when the shit hits the fan. At least it gives you a split second of surprise.”
The noseless slime was coming at Stone, his machete raised high overhead in his right hand ready to deal a death blow… but
Stone struck paydirt first. He came in fast from the left and slammed the blade into the man’s guts, slicing it from left
to right so the entire stomach opened up. He ripped it out just as fast and stepped to the side. The machete wielder stopped
as if he’d run into a brick
wall, his mouth twitching as if he’d just swallowed a rattlesnake. He looked down at the spreading red across his deer-hide
jacket, at his own intestines sliding out from his stomach, releasing a load of half digested food and blood, and his eyes
got a look of infinite surprise.
“I—I can’t die,” he blurted out as if making a confessional to Stone. “I’ve killed them all. Everyone I’ve fought.”
“No comment,” Stone spat out, grabbing the machete from the trembling stiffened hand. He turned and rushed into the melee
without a backward glance at the dying man whose eyes were glued to his rushing guts as if he were looking into the punishing
face of God himself. With a blade in each hand Stone waded into the next two takers like a tank going into a crumbling fence.
They were tough but they weren’t fast. Not fast enough, anyway, as they found out. With his youth and training and lean-muscled
body Stone was suddenly somehow right between the two of them, slipping down on both knees as their blades stabbed forward.
He ripped the machete and the bowie-sized hunting blade into each man’s knee, cutting right through the bone and slicing the
thick connecting tissue inside into broken wires that no longer supported their part of the load. As they tumbled forward,
each man’s wounded leg falling limp as wet tissue, and slammed into the ground, Stone was already up and moving, rising to
his feet in a single leaping motion as he propelled himself forward into the charging wild-eyed ranks that seemed to have
no end.
Stone tried to calm himself and be objective as he started forward toward the next three, their steel blades and axes caught
for a split second by an errant beam of the moon, flashing into his eyes with a telegram of death. He didn’t have to kill
all of them, for Christ’s sake, he thought to
himself as he suddenly changed direction in mid-stride, pulling them off balance for a second. Just get through them, to the
road ahead. He could outrun them there. There was just this three, and then two beyond them. It was a football game, that’s all, he tried to bullshit himself, and I’m the ball.
Plan made, Stone came straight toward the three rather anxious individuals who were zeroing in on his body like it was Christmas
roast, and again feinted to the right, so that all three of them veered that way. Like a receiver in full stride, he turned
his leg and pushed off with the right foot, suddenly spinning him away from them again, catapulted by the force of the motion
like a ricocheting rock. He swung the machete forward as he spun by the closest of the scavengers, a man with a long black
beard that reached almost to his stomach and a mat of twisted hair piled high on his head. The motion was so quick that none
of them quite realized what had happened for a second. Stone just suddenly was gone—and then the two scavengers turned and
saw their pal with his hands to his face screaming, or trying to scream.
For the machete had gone point first into the opened mouth of the man, cutting all the way into his throat and out the back
of his neck. It was as if he was a sword swallower, only he wasn’t. His eyes rolled back in his head, looking like overcooked
eggs about to burst their shells as the man tried to scream. But with the blade filling his entire oral cavity it was a little
difficult. A gush of liquid swam out from all sides of the machete as his severed jugular vein fed out a stream of red through
his lips. He looked as if he was one of those statues rich people or would-be’s had on their lawn, spitting out a little fountain
of water. Only this was blood.
His black beard turned red, bright red, red as Santa’s
Christmas hat, and gurgling pink bubbles of foam he fell forward. The handle of the blade slammed butt-end first into the
dirt, pushing with all the weight of the scavenger’s two-hundred-seventy pounds plus into the machete, pushing the blade in
a kind of circular motion. The sharp edge sliced through everything that was left and the entire head pulled free of the body,
somehow still horribly alive—eyes rolling, quivering lips whispering moans of incredible pain.
But Stone was long gone. The moment he felt the machete dig in he let go of it and shot forward. The remaining two, huge leather-faced
things, with spikes where teeth should have been, their frames covered over in immense, badly sewn buffalo hides that still
stank of bison urine, came toward him. One was swinging a long axe, the other twirling a hooklike weapon that he swung on
the end of a spiked chain. Just the kind of guys you’d like to go bowling with. Stone watched the orbiting hook coming in
toward his chest like a meat hook searching for meat to sink into and timed himself. As the orbit just took it by, he launched
himself straight toward the bearer. By the time the hook spun around again, Stone was already inside the man’s reach. He caught
the inside of the hook with his left hand as he slammed his knife hand up and inside right between the man’s legs.
The scavenger seemed to shoot like a rocket into the blood-scented air as his genitals exploded from his body. He had the
most terrified expression Stone had ever seen on a man. Stone grabbed the handle of the hook as it fell from the air. The
wood-cutting axe of the attacker bit into the dirt just inches from his foot as Stone let the hook go toward the man’s chest.
The tip of the hook caught the flesh scavenger just beneath the rib cage and as soon as he felt it dig in, Stone pulled back
hard like a fisherman landing a bass. The eight
inch hook dug deep up and under the ribs, hooking into the right lung. Stone stepped back another yard, pulled on the chain
as the man came helplessly forward, walking as if on his toes, as he sucked in hard for air. Stone wrapped both forearms around
the chain and pulled with every once of strength. The hook ripped forward and tore right through the rib cage of the man,
exploding in a tidal wave of blood and lung and whatever the hell else is stuck up there inside the chest. It was as if a
bomb had gone off inside him. He toppled forward like a tree pouring blood and lay there quivering and letting out sounds
that sounded like the mews of a dying kitten.
Stone rose to his feet and raised the knife hand, ready for the next man. And still they came toward him, howling in mad rage
even after seeing six of their number slaughtered like cattle. The son-of-bitches were stupid or brave. Maybe they were the
same fucking thing, Stone thought disgustedly. But he didn’t have to fight them anymore. The road lay just ahead. Dark, snow-covered,
but he could beat them in a flat race. He turned in a flash and shot into the dancing shadows as the moon flickered in and
out of the darkening clouds overhead, creating a kaleidoscope of rippling ribbons of darkness and light. They lumbered after
him, screaming, enraged, swinging their slicers with wild flailing arms. They came down the road in their stinking furs and
thick coats of handmade armor from wired-together rows of tin cans like a herd of mastodons who didn’t know they were already
extinct. But Stone was gone, disappearing into the darkness. They kept on for almost fifty yards, with a lot of huffing and
puffing just for face’s sake. Then they stopped.
CHAPTERTwo
IF DOGS can pray then this one was praying with all the fervor of its canine heart, praying a message of supreme thanks that
Martin Stone was walking toward it from out of t. . .
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