He continued to take out the 12-gauge, but slowly now, and brought the bike to a complete stop with one hand. The dog was yawning behind him and making slurping sounds. But the sheer fact that the animal was not reacting to the men around them further confirmed Stone’s feeling that they were no threat at all. For the canine’s senses were tuned to a slightly higher level than Stone’s. He had already found that out, rendering any thoughts of pride about his supposed extra abilities a mere joke.
As Stone surveyed the silent-as-a-morgue crew, he saw that, far from being a threat to him—or anyone—they were, in fact, pathetic-looking fellows, not dissimilar to pictures he’d seen of concentration-camp victims when they were released from Nazi camps after World War II. Skinny as rails with sores on their lips and faces, hopeless almost-dead looks in their eyes. He could see that they had gotten a miserable little sputtering fire going behind some bushes. And were toasting what looked like branches—to eat. Jesus Christ, what was this—the Home for the Hopelessly Depressed? These guys made Stone’s blackest moments seem like he was watching a Laurel and Hardy movie. They had depression and apathy down to an art form.
Seeing that they meant absolutely no harm and, if anything, flinched as he trained his eyes on them, Stone dismounted and put back the shotgun. Didn’t want to give anyone a heart attack. Not that they looked like they card if they lived or died. The dog stayed on the back of the bike, stretching out to take up the full room and the warmth that Stone had left behind on the seat. He walked about ten yards over to the main group of the cadaverous-looking fellows, sprawled all around the small flame that passed for a fire. All in all, it was just about the most pathetic scene Stone had ever laid eyes on.
“Howdy,” he said, walking up to within a few feet of the fire and addressing a man who sat in front of it, roasting one of the hard roots over the gasping flames. It didn’t look as if it was getting cooked too fast. But a least this man, unlike the others, seemed to have a tiny spark of something left in his eyes.
“Hello,” the man said back, slowly, as if he hadn’t said the word for a long time.
“What the hell is going on here?” Stone asked, waving his hand around. “I mean, you guys look like you’ve been having a few problems. Not the least of which is that none of you are wearing more than a few stitches of clothes. Don’t you know it’s cold out?”
“Cold?” the brown-haired man said with a look of surprise. He looked around him, up at the sky and then down at his own shivering flesh, which was covered by a tattered sweatshirt that looked like it had been around at the turn of the century. “Yes, I guess it is cold, isn’t it?” The guy looked intelligent enough, but he also looked as though he was about forty, and somehow, by his features, Stone knew he was hardly out of his twenties. They all were aged, drawn, broken. Like men who had been through some hellish experience, so terrible and destructive that there was hardly any life left in them—just shells with whatever had been a man either destroyed or hiding so far down inside of them that it was unseen and unwanted.
“Why aren’t you clothed? Eating real food? Have shelters?” Stone asked them, exasperated, searching for some kind of emotional reaction, even anger. Their zombielike state, all the faces just staring into the fire, not even looking up at Stone, was the worst thing of all.
“Shelter?” the man echoed back as if it were a word he had never heard before. “Oh, yes,” he almost whispered. “Yes, warmth—and bed. I remember those things.”
“That’s great,” Stone said, getting more and more pissed off by the whole scene by the minute. “You remember those things. What’s wrong with him?” he asked, pointing at a guy who was lying flat on his back, naked, shaking violently with his hands twisted up in front of his chest like little claws. Foam was coming out of his nose and mouth.
“He was cleansed too long,” the root cooker answered Stone. “There is nothing left up here.” He pointed with his finger to his own skull, and for the first time there was a flicker of a dark smile, which zipped across thin lips before the face turned back to total rock again.
“What’s your name, pal?” Stone asked.
“My name? My—name?” Again the man struggled within himself as if such thoughts were strange, difficult. “I am Terrance, Terrance Smythe. Yes, that’s who I am.”
“And I’m Stone,” his interrogator answered with a grunt. “Well, I’m glad to see we’re getting somewhere. Now, I don’t mean to be nosy or anything,” Stone went on, “but seeing as how you fellows don’t seem engaged in very pressing business right now, maybe you could just tell me what happened to all of you-and what being ‘cleansed’ is?”
“Sure, I’ll tell you.” Smythe said, his face getting livelier than it had been thus far in their “conversation.” “We are all rejects of the Cult of the Perfect Aura, which controls all of La Junta now. We—we …” He struggled again with the concepts, the words. Stone wondered if these suckers had exchanged even one word in the month before he’d arrived on the scene. “Guru Yasgar and the Transformer—they did this to us. They—make you drink things, and then make you do—horn—horr—” His voice choked up and he seemed to just stare straight ahead and stutter away for about ten seconds before he got through some terrible block in his mind. Whatever had been done to these bastards had been bad. Real bad.
“Horrible things to your mind, to your flesh. Many people go under the ‘cleansing’ and they become Yasgar’s slaves, will do anything for him. He has hundreds, perhaps thousands of followers. We—we—couldn’t be broken. Or rather…” He laughed with a snort as he looked around at his comrades and realized perhaps for the first time in a long time just how pathetic they all were. “At least, we couldn’t he broken to fit the zombie type that Yasgar needs for his fucking slave city.” Now Smythe was starting to get angry as his memories sprang back, as his broken shell still found one more little spark of fire. Good, Stone thought, good. Anger was the only thing that could bring these husks of men back to life.
“So they dumped us, just dropped us in the woods to die, to starve. As many have. We are the Broken Ones. We live just to die. But most of them…their heads just don’t work right. Can hardly even crap without shitting on themselves. I’m probably the Einstein of the bunch.” The man laughed again, revealing that every single tooth in his mouth had been broken. Nice guy, this Yasgar. And somehow Stone knew that the bastard had his sister.
“Most who come here in the woods have died. I pull them back behind the trees over there. Some of these Broken Ones you see around you—they tried to eat the corpses. But I wouldn’t let them. There are some things even the lowest of men must not stoop to.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” Stone said. At least the guy still had a conscience. That was more than a lot of men possessed these days. “This guy Yasgar, you ever see him?” Stone asked, wanting to know the description of the man so he’d know who to kill when he found him. Stone’s blood was coming to a slow boil over all this. It disgusted him to see his fellow man fallen to such a state.
“Yes—I—I—I—,” Smythe stuttered again. There were so many terrible memories locked in that head. And every question that Stone asked seemed to bring them out. “I saw him several times. He is—is—is—fat, very fat. And has black eyes that look right through you. He wears a black robe that floats over him, not even touching his skin. His voice is like thunder. I tell you, Stone, Guru Yasgar is not a a man at all, but a beast from hell, sent here to destroy mankind.” Suddenly the man was ranting and raving and rose up in his place, letting the root fall into the coals and smolder with a sour oily smoke.
“Easy, pal, easy,” Stone said, slapping him on the shoulder. “I’m on your side. You want to get back at this bastard, maybe I’m the man to talk to.“Suddenly he heard a rustling of leaves just above his head and looked up to see one of the Broken Ones hurtling down, his arms and legs all flailing about like a rag doll. Just by the clumsy fall, Stone knew the poor bastard wasn’t even trying to attack—he had just sli
pped. Stone managed to shift his by quickly out of the way and throw his arms out, actually catching, or at least slowing, the emaciated man’s body. It sort of bounced off his arms and chest and then dropped to the leaf-covered ground with a loud groan. The man rose up to a kneeling position, apparently none the worse for wear.
Stone looked down at him with disgust flickering across his face. “Shouldn’t climb trees, pal, if you don’t know how to hang on.” The man just looked at him like an orphan staring through a window.
“Oh, Jesus,” Stone muttered under his breath.
“They climb the trees because they are afraid,” Smythe said, now standing and facing Stone. “They have no weapons, are too weak to fight. When wolves or wild dogs come in the night, they can’t even fend them off. We all climb the trees after the fire goes out. See—look around you.”
“All right,” Stone said, clapping his hands together loud a number of times so even the most comatose of them at least lifted his head at the sharp sounds. “It’s boot camp time. You all just had the misfortune to run into Martin Stone—and I’m going to kick some energy into those dead asses of yours.” Stone knew he was probably getting himself into something he was going to regret. But he had no choice. He was already starting to feel like a fucking mother hen to a brood of very messed up chickens.
TEN
“First thing,” Stone said, addressing them as he paced around the fire, “is to get some shelters put up. It looks like it might rain. Ain’t no way for a man to live, lying in the dirt, hanging on to tree branches. Now, let’s get some asses in gear here,” Stone yelled, walking around, grabbing a branch, hitting it against a tree. But none of them seemed all that enthusiastic about getting up and doing much of anything.
“It’s night, mister,” Smythe said. “Animals crawling around. They’s all scared at night.” He pointed around to the huddled masses, who were like a bunch of corpses stacking themselves up so as to make it easier for death to collect them.
“Listen, gang,” Stone said, turning around to all of them, who watched warily. “You boys ain’t got a hell of a lot to do tomorrow morning, so it ain’t gonna hurt you to do a little work now.” Moans and hisses filled the flickering shadows around the slowly falling fire.
“Numero uno—if you’re scared of animals,” Stone said, walking off a few paces and grabbing some branches that had fallen from a dying tree, “is make a bigger fire.” He threw the dry wood onto the flames and they quickly shot up into the air. The men looked on in amazement. The event seemed like some sort of supernatural occurrence. But they quickly took advantage of the fire, banding together, edging toward the warming flames, rubbing their hands and legs as they tried to get some heat into their bones for the first time in a long time.
Stone whistled toward the bike. He was going to need some additional motivation. The pit bull yawned, stretched itself several times, and then jumped down and came out of the darkness, stopping at Stone’s feet. The men reacted instantly to the dog. And didn’t like it at all. They had had too many dog packs come in the night and eat a number of their own to make them particularly enamored of the species. Stone would used that fear to his—and their—advantage, though they didn’t know it.
“Now move, fellows. My dog here doesn’t like to get wet when it rains or snows. And when he gets angry, I don’t like to see the results.” He kicked the pit bull in the side and it let out a snarl, baring its teeth and looking around to see who the hell was fucking with it. But the Broken Ones were already up on their feet. Even the ones who couldn’t walk were dragging themselves off. Everybody was moving except the dead—of which Stone counted three out of a total of twenty-six.
“Good, you’re moving,” he yelled out to them. “That’s an excellent start. Now, grab whatever big branches you can find—long and thick enough to hold up for a while. You understand me?”
“Yes,” a few voices grudgingly hissed back. Stone pushed the dog forward, giving it a good shove with the bottom of his boot. Again the animal looked around at him as though he was completely mad and it was contemplating whether to take the boot down to the pins or not. But the movement of the Broken Ones caught its attention and the pit bull pranced along and up to a bunch of them. Though the animal was just being friendly and wanted to get petted and play a little, the half-mindless men saw only a demon dog, a flesh ripper, and they moved fast. Within minutes Stone had a whole little depository of wood stretching around him. Already their eyes were open wider, their lungs breathing deeper. Against their goddamn wills, Stone was going to give them the instant twelve-hour course in how to be men.
“Very good, very good,” Stone said. They seemed to like the praise, and a few of their faces broke out into childlike smiles, like a baby that had just deposited its first turd in the porcelain bowl instead of bed. Stone was working only with the highest-quality material here, there was no doubt about it.
“Now, Smythe, why don’t you get the next-strongest guy around here and drag these three bodies out of here. Take them at least a hundred yards. And then I want them buried. At least three feet down, so the animals don’t get them. Probably the main reason you’ve been getting all these damn blood packs sniffing around the place is that you’re allowing corpses to just lie among you. Jesus Christ—get some sense into those over washed brains.” They looked at him as if they were trying to listen, trying to understand. But from the tongue-hanging, drooling expressions of most of them, Stone could see he was working with prekindergarten mentalities. Ninety percent of the helpless sons of bitches had Jello for brains.
Stone took four of the strongest branches and had the men dig holes about twenty feet apart. He ordered four of them to take each corner and slam the posts in, then fill them in with mud. Though the men were simpleminded and worked slowly, under Stone’s constant direction and supervision, telling each little group of them where to take what piece of wood, where to drag what bucket of water and mix it with dirt, they started actually getting things done. Within an hour of Stone’s arrival, the place was a regular beehive of activity.
Once the main frame was completed Stone showed them how to lay the cross pieces, tying them down at each end with vine and then building a cross foundation with smaller branches. Again, they caught on once they had a visual demonstration. They seemed to think it was fun, with all of them wanting to participate now as if it was some kind of game. Even the crippled ones crawled around underneath weaving in small branches to help make the roof dry. Another hour produced a woven lean-to that looked for all its twisted unevenness fairly strong—and well designed. The angled roof would push off the rain; the mud-cemented corner beams would keep the thing strong enough to take any but the strongest winds. Now for the mortar. Stone directed them to make thick buckets of mud and then pour them over the walls and roof, mixing in leaves and twigs to form an almost impenetrable natural barrier to the elements. Again, slow at first, once they saw that all that it entailed was mixing mud and playing pat-a-cake with the roof, they contributed.
Once Stone saw that the whole mud-splashing operation was well under way, he gathered the pit bull, Smythe, and one other fellow who he had observed to be a cut above the rest. Which wasn’t saying a hell of a lot. Still, the man didn’t drool, could talk—if only softly—and had a little more muscle on his wasted body than the rest. He’d have to do. Stone took them out as the others worked on. The night had fallen black as a velvet sheet, with just a few stars and the glow of the universe to guide them through the woods. Smythe and the second man, who called himself only, “Damaged,” were extremely reluctant to come along, to go into the shadows where they had heard the screams of their fellows. But with Excaliber taking up the rear and showing a few teeth when they slowed down, and Stone taking the lead holding the Ruger .44 in his hand, safety off and ready for quick fire, they had no choice.
They had to learn how to fend for themselves. And fast. Stone didn’t say a word, just led them through the forest until they came to a rise, with a large f
lat boulder atop it. He led them up to it and then lay down prone on his stomach and pointed that they should do the same. The dog got down on its haunches alongside him and looked down toward the large meadow below them, stretching off for nearly a half-mile in each direction with trees at the end. Smythe began to complain that he “didn’t know a whole lot about hunting,” but Stone just put his fingers to the man’s lips.
“Look—just watch me!” The two of them watched sullenly as Stone whistled softly twice to the dog and then slapped it on the side. The animal shot down the side of the boulder, dropping down the eight-foot face to the meadow-land below. Like a rocket, it tore ass straight away from them and headed for the woods on the far side, just a gray mass of shadows. Stone held the pistol in his outstretched hand and breathed out hard, getting his arm and body as relaxed as possible. Then he waited.
They didn’t have to wait long. The dog had been gone less than two minutes when there was a commotion from out of the trees and suddenly they could see a large shape coming straight at them as if its tail was on fire. At first it wasn’t clear just what it was. But then, as a mass of thick clouds passed overhead and the stars suddenly splashed down over them inundating the scene with a billion pinpoints of light, they could see exactly what the dog had flushed out. A buck—and a big one at that. A good six feet at the skull, with horns on each side that looked as if they could make good chair frames. Behind the thing the dog was racing up a storm, snapping and barking and putting on quite a show, considering the buck was much larger than it was.
Stone waited until the animal was within about fifty yards, and pulled the trigger twice. The two men next to him let out little whelps of fear from the sharp retorts. But the buck did a lot more than just make sounds. It stopped dead in its tracks as two red holes the size of silver dollars appeared in its skull. The thing rose up on its back legs, did a little dance to some unheard at, and then fell right over on its back, one of its horns sticking into the turf as it wiggled around in its death throes.
The Damn Disciples Page 7
