The Leader made motions with his paws, commanding the army of rats, brown and black and gray, sleek and fanged with long tails dragging behind them, into two flanks. He would scout straight up the center, and when he called, they knew to come. He was the general. His strategies had worked time and time again. Food was the reward they got in return for their loyalty, their willingness to fight, to die for the Leader. He delivered. And it was eating time. Bring on the hot stuff. The human meat that tasted so sweet. A rat’s greatest delicacy.
Martin Stone walked down the deer path along the edge of some thick woods supporting himself on a homemade crutch fashioned from a V-topped branch, cursing every step of the way.
“Fuck, shit, piss. Goddamn leg—can’t even walk or do anything anymore. A man can’t even trust his own body parts—who the hell can he trust? I ask you fucking that.” Though he didn’t actually address the leg, keeping his eyes ahead looking for groundhog and snake holes, as he had already fallen twice in the last hour and didn’t feel like doing it again. But the leg damn well knew who he was talking to. Ever since he had broken it in a fall two weeks before, it had been causing him all kinds of trouble. First it had swollen up to the size of a balloon. Then, with herbs and cauterizing it and setting it with a splint, it had seemed to go down again. He had thought maybe it was actually going to heal, and everything would be all right.
Yeah, right. Only, the leg was swollen again, and a very strange color along the whole side of his thigh. He could feel a pounding in his heart—and knew he was getting blood poisoning. Stone had been having hallucinations for the last few hours. Things crawling along the edges of the woods, always just out of his sight. It wasn’t that far to the bunker. He just had to make it to his late father’s mountain retreat, built into the side of a mountain, and equipped with the most modern equipment, computers, even medical supplies. Somehow he would have to treat himself, cut the leg open and … But he’d worry about that later. First he had to even try to stagger the next five miles to the mountain at the north end of Estes National Park in northern Colorado—then go straight up the side of the thing for another mile or two.… He prayed he had enough left in him to make it. He was on his last leg.
There was a low growl at his feet, and Stone looked down as he almost tripped over the furred shaped that kept walking back and forth in front of him.
“Watch it, dog, will you, for Christ’s sake,” Stone muttered, in no mood for even the slightest bit of bullshit on a cold, painful morning like this one was turning out to be. He looked down and into the almond-shaped eyes of the ninety-pound pit bull that was trotting along looking up. It appeared to be pissed off as hell, its face all squinched up and glaring at Stone as if to say, “We haven’t eaten diddly-shit beyond some acorns and a few berries in the last twelve hours. Dogs can be assholes too.” Or something like that.
“We’ll be there soon fucking enough,” the fighting terrier’s human companion snapped down. “Cool it, dog! You’re supposed to be man’s best friend—not his biggest hassle. Just chill out, food hound. Cripples don’t need tripping.” The dog growled under its breath and looked away disgustedly, as if it might catch a glimpse of something edible in the woods. It was never meaner than when traveling on an empty stomach, like a fighter without sex for a month before the big bout. The lack of chewable substance in its jaws sent the pit bull into a deep, dark, and brooding depression. Chow Boy better not get too close to him, that’s all the dog had to say about the subject.
But suddenly all the arguing and snapping at one another like an ancient married couple was irrelevant. Excaliber sensed them first, stopping suddenly in his tracks, just a few feet ahead of Stone, so the human nearly toppled over the top of the dog. Stone started to curse up a storm, and raised his crutch ready to smack the canine a good stiff one right on the flank, when he saw that Excaliber was set in full attack posture, pointing back in the direction they had just come from. Stone knew the animal would never go into fighting mode against him, no matter how snappy their little argument. So he shut up and turned slowly around, supporting himself on the branch.
“Shit-coated Crispies,” Stone muttered under his breath, not even aware he had said the words. He didn’t like what he saw. Not one fucking bit. Rats. An army of them, making the terrain just a blanket of brown and black swarming little bodies with way too many and too big teeth for their foot-and-a-half- to two-foot-long frames. And they were closing in from both sides fast, the forward ranks only a hundred yards or so away. Just ahead of the advancing vermin army came several gophers and a snake or two, all scared up by the meat-eating procession that chewed down everything that got in its way. Though the invasion of claws and snapping jaws was clearly after the pink stuff. And that meant one Martin Stone. Which, as he thought not too hard about it, he realized was him.
Stone shook his head hard seeing that he was half hypnotized by the honor show coming in fast. He didn’t have time to be falling into spaceland right now—or he was going to be meeting a lot of hungry mouths within about three seconds. Bracing himself on the branch crutch that was under his left armpit, Stone whipped the shotgun he had snatched from an encampment of dead cannibals—whom he had put in that state—and swung it around in front of him. The pit bull was snarling now, its jaws wide as it pulled back, its tail just touching Stone’s leg—so it knew its back was covered. At least Chow Boy better see that it was covered. The dog didn’t like the gray skulking shapes that ran along on fast little claws one fucking bit. Shivers ran along its spine like dirty waves at Coney Island Beach.
“Come on,” Stone screamed as his slow-witted brain realized they were being surrounded. Already they were blocked on three sides; only the field directly ahead was not yet blanketed with the squirming little bodies crying out in squeaking high-pitched commands to one another. “Let’s move it, dog. And I mean fucking pronto!” He started ahead, lurching along on the crutch as he gripped the shotgun hard so it wouldn’t fall out. Suddenly the brown sea of rats came rushing in from every side—even ahead—and Stone realized they had been successfully cut off. He dropped the shotgun arm down as low as he could hold it and still keep moving, stumbling, half falling ahead. He pulled the trigger and the 12-gauge autofire slammed back in his hands, threatening to pull him backward. But it did a hell of a lot worse to the wall of gray and brown straight ahead. The shot left the muzzle only about six inches above the ground—and spread out a good ten feet before it met vermin flesh coming in. The steel pellets got the better of the smashup, and a whole slew of rats went flying off in bloody spirals as a pathway was cleared right through the living swarm.
As Stone stumbled forward he could sense the rats coming and snapping at his boots, trying to climb up him. But Excaliber met them face to face, jaw to jaw, tooth to snapping tooth. Only, his were bigger, faster, and meaner. For as one would leap up toward the charging pair, the pit bull would catch it in midair like some mutt out in the backyard catching a hot dog fresh off the family grill. With a single snap the pit bull spat them out again, moving, never stopping. He took care of those that charged toward Stone’s legs as well, ripping them right off the Chow Boy’s pants as they tried to scamper up and get some fang into his flesh. In seconds the pit bull had disposed of a dozen, leaving their spurting corpses behind, which others of the pack stopped and began chewing on. A meal on the run was always a happy occurrence.
Seeing that the dog was taking care of business down below, Stone turned his attention to their forward escape route, their only escape route. And it’d better be fast, he could see as he did a quick 180-degree scan without breaking his uneven half-run, for within twenty or thirty seconds the main bulk of the rat army would be upon them—and that, no matter how wildly they fought, would be that.
He aimed the shotgun again, holding it down as low as he could, as if he were reaching for the ground, and pulled the trigger. The reason he had grabbed this particular blunderbuss over other, higher-quality, firepower was just for the autoeject and instan
t refire mode. It meant he could keep pulling at the damn thing with just one hand. The second shell sent out a hailstorm of pellets from the smoking muzzle. And another forty or so rats who thought they were about to be in culinary heaven were suddenly nothing more that flopping dead meat, their dark pelts saturated with red, their own brothers and sisters already chewing on their still-feeling flesh.
Suddenly Stone sensed a shape coming up at him from the left and turned his head just in time to see the biggest goddamn rat he had ever laid eyes on—a good two feet plus—launch itself and come toward him, its jaws fully extended like something Cape Kennedy might have once launched to scare the shit out of the rest of the universe. Somehow Stone twisted his whole body and ripped the shotgun up trying to get a bead on the thing, which was closing in on his very eyeballs. He could count the whiskers on the ugly one-eyed face. He pulled the trigger and shifted the crutch around fast to stop himself from going down from the recoil.
The rat took the full load of shot from a distance of two feet. The creature disintegrated in the air, like a balloon that had popped, a balloon filled with blood and slime that filled the air around Stone with a slick red spray that lingered like a mist. But he wasn’t counting the drops. Swinging the shotgun around, he let off two more blasts and then got to full, stumbling gallop in seconds. Another wave of little flesheaters went flying off like rag dolls painted red, and Stone and the dog waded right through and over the twitching bodies, nearly falling and slipping in the pools of wet fur, the puddles of hot blood.
Still, for all the heroics and sound and fury, Stone knew they needed a miracle. As he scouted ahead, looking around desperately for he didn’t know what, he saw a chasm in the earth—a fissure, glacially created. It formed a long jagged crack in the earth a good six feet wide and nearly a quarter-mile long. If miracles were needed, this was looking like it might be in the right department. Excaliber saw it too, and he barked hard at Stone twice, signaling him to make sure the Chow Boy had seen it. The canine knew that the human could get a little fog-headed at times.
Stone fired twice more and then, when he fired a third time, felt a click. Empty. He had more shells in the pack on his back, but somehow he didn’t think the rodent army was going to allow him to take a look. The last two volleys of death-dealing lead carved out a pathway through the rats right to the edge of the rock fissure. Stone and the pit bull tore through the bloody debris of violently shaking corpses. Excaliber got up to full running speed and took off without looking down. In an instant the animal had soared over the fissure and landed on the far side. He turned and, seeing that Stone wasn’t there, looked back across the gap and let out with a long howl, throwing his head back, as if to say, “Oh shit, man, you in trouble again?”
Stone’s crutch caught at the last instant, just before he was about to send himself flying into space. He nearly fell into the deep fissure, seeing its jagged rock walls disappear below into darkness. The damn thing went all the fucking way to the center of the earth, for all he knew. But he caught himself at the last instant with his hands and knees, having to pull back with all his strength to stop himself from shooting over the side.
But out of the frying pan and into the fucking fire. For the rats were closing in as if he’d just said something very bad about their mothers—death in every snarling snout, every beady eye. He scrambled to his feet, stepped back about two yards from the edge, and, knowing he wouldn’t have time for much of a start, launched himself forward. Stone had time to take two steps and then leap up with his good leg. At the same instant he pushed down hard with both arms against the crutch with everything he had, trying to use it as an instant pole vault stick to get some leverage.
It half worked. He went shooting off the edge just as a dozen rats launched themselves straight at his departing body, not wanting the meal to get away. The force of the takeoff had enough momentum—but it also twisted him around sideways so that as he flew over the dark chasm Stone was looking almost upside down at the thing. And even as he soared he could feel that he had taken along some visitors for the ride—gnawing little teeth began stabbing into him here and there. He’d worry about them later—if there was a later.
Suddenly the other side of the fissure was upon him and Stone managed to twist his body all the way around, coming down on his rib cage. He hit at chest level, slamming hard with all the air being forced out of him. For a second he swore he was going to fall backward right into the hole. But he sent out a burst of strength into his arms and hands that clawed and ripped at the dirt and rocks and somehow began pulling him up. Even as he rose up over the side, Stone felt the bites of the airborne pals. But Excaliber was on them in a flash, barking and snarling up a storm as he saw the ugly critters. He snapped out at Stone three times—and threw three bleeding bodies right over the side of the chasm, where they ricocheted back and forth all the way down with wet sounds like billiard balls dipped in blood.
Stone rolled back as he heard the pit bull barking and standing in full fighting stance, its jaws wide, its eyes little slits for protection. He saw a whole front wave of rats come flying toward the far side of the fissure and—jump. And though they gave it a damn good try and some of them nearly did make it, not one did. Twenty more went hurtling down into the darkness, sending up a chorus of squeaks.
Seeing that the army, as fierce and furious as they were, couldn’t touch them, Stone and the pit bull relaxed slightly, the dog letting his puffed-out fur come down, his head pop out from its neck a little farther from the defensive turtlelike posture it had been in. Stone just tried to let his double-timing heart slow down a little, or he’d be looking for a pacemaker in the ruins of the malls. Yet another wave of the bastards came tearing right at the side and another dozen or so of the bravest, a.k.a. “stupidest,” also gave it the old rodent try. With equal nonsuccess. And more of the furry bodies went slamming all the way down so that they left a little remembrance of themselves at each stop along the way.
But at last, even the slow-witted vermin realized that they were getting nowhere fast and were going to lose a lot more of their dues-paying membership if this kept up. They stopped. Hundreds of them gathered just yards away from Stone and screamed and clawed at the air, as if they were imagining in great detail what it would be like to sink their fangs into his flesh. Those in the back ranks began eating their fallen comrades, so nicely diced up and cut into little bite-sized pieces by the shotgun blasts. Stone and the bull terrier could hear the slurping sounds all along the death field. Not wanting to miss out on the feast, the front battle ranks broke off pursuit and turned away from the human and the dog, who stared back with disgusted eyes. The squealing carnivores began fighting viciously over the remains of their late relatives. They tore around the charnel grounds, their mouths like vacuum cleaners, just fractions of an inch above the red-soaked ground, gobbling down everything that wasn’t nailed down.
TWO
The first thousand feet up the side of the mountain atop which the bunker had been built wasn’t bad at all. Stone would ordinarily have gone all the way around the far side of the mountain, where a winding road led all the way to the top. It was an extra two hours by motorcycle. Only, he didn’t have a bike anymore—which meant it was an extra two days or more on a single leg. Stone knew he didn’t have that much time. His leg was too infected, the fever in his body rising by the hour. Either he made it up to the 12,000-foot summit from the base of about 8,000—where he was now—or it would all pretty much be over. He had to try. If he fell, at least it would be fast.
Still, that was all theoretical. For when he stopped and rested on an outcropping, and looked down, Stone saw that he was already far up. Really far. He would drop thousands of feet before being slammed to bloody pulp on the rocks below. He gulped hard and vowed not to look again. He never had been good with heights. And he saw that it was getting harder, rapidly. Whereas he had pretty much been hopping around from ledge to ledge, now it grew steeper. To make his way up, he had to search for
handholds, small cracks, little outcroppings hardly wider than half a telephone booth.
The dog, of course, was a regular fucking mountain goat, hopping all over the damn place and barking back down, inquiring what the hell was taking Stone so long. If showing off was a sin, then the pit bull was going straight to hell when the shit hit the fan. Stone would vouch for that. Still, the very fact that the dog was able to climb up ahead of him, go up the side of what seemed like Mount Everest, at least showed him that it could be done. And the sheer determination not to let himself be bested by a damn dog gave him some driving mental motivation as well. At any rate, he was pulling himself up using almost all arm strength after a while, resting here and there, then getting up another twenty, thirty feet and having to stop again.
After a while it became too hard even for that, though the pit bull seemed able to keep on so that when Stone looked up the animal was already a good four hundred feet ahead of him and tearing up the steep slope as if he was on flatland. Stone stopped on a decent-size outcropping and took a good look ahead to scout out any holds. It was getting much worse. He needed something beyond hands—needed a whole fucking mountain-climbing outfit, with ropes and all. Suddenly he had an idea. It was ridiculous, impossible, insane. But maybe it would work. Stone took off the pack he had been carrying, filled with supplies he had gathered from the dead cannibal village. He didn’t need them now. If he made it to the bunker, there were plenty more supplies. If not…
The Damn Disciples Page 2
