Chapter Thirteen
By the time they reached the outskirts of Keenesburg, Stone still didn’t feel like he had really laundered his lungs. He felt dirty and wanted nothing more than to find a bath, try to clean the stench of decay and rot off him. The dog kept snorting and sneezing and scratching at itself, as if it were covered with fleas. Stone found a small garage/stable at the very outer perimeter of the town, a ramshackle place that no one else apparently was using, since neither a vehicle nor a single horse or mule sat in the broken-down, fenced-in area, or in the half-collapsed barn, framed on each side by trees.
The place was out-of-the-way, almost nonexistent—the kind of place Stone loved. He came to a stop just in front of a little shack—hardly more than a bunch of warped pieces of plywood nailed up into a square about six feet high and eight feet long. It was hard to believe someone would live in it, but from the little trickle of smoke rising up out of the chimney made from an old paint can on top, Stone had to assume that was the case. And sure enough, when he dismounted and knocked on what he deducted was the door as all four sides looked pretty much the same, an old man, as ancient-looking as the face of the desert, pushed out on the wall so that it swung around on crude hinges, and stepped out. He carried a shotgun in his arms and tried to look as mean as possible, though standing about 4′ 10″ and being hardly more than a shriveled-up raisin of an old man with a thousand lines creasing his leathery face, fingers as thin as pencils, he wasn’t too fear-inspiring.
“What the hell you want?” the old man asked suspiciously, squinting one bloodshot eye at Stone.
“Sorry if I’m in the wrong place,” Stone said, holding his hand slowly up in the air to show he meant no harm. “I thought I saw a sign out there by the road that said ‘garage.’”
The old man laughed a short and bitter sound and then said. “No, ain’t been no garage here for years. Ain’t been no fuel, no nothing. And since my son died—the bastards killed him”—the man went on looking toward the town in the distance and spitting at it—”ain’t done much of nothing but sit around and wait to die.” The old codger, whom Stone estimated had to be at least ninety-five or a hundred years old gave him a big grin, his mouth filled with wooden teeth, as if the statement were quite amusing.
“Well, look, if you’re just sitting around waiting to die,” Stone said, moving his hand slowly into his pocket so as not to startle the man, “why not make a few bucks doing it?” He took out two silver dollars from a stack he had filled a pocket with, coins he’d taken from his father’s bunker supplies. Stone had learned quickly after leaving the bunker, having lived there for five years, that money was worth a hell of a lot more than it had been before. And that a silver dollar was enough for men to kill for.
The man’s eyes grew wide at the proffered coins, shining in the few straggly rays of gray light that sputtered down from the fallout sheets ten miles up, just sitting up there looking down on them all like the cloaked judges of doom.
“Name’s Lomax,” the man said, suddenly as friendly as a summer day. “But people around here always called me Pliers, on account I always been good with my hands.” He took the coins from Stone’s palm and drew them to him like the most precious things in the world. He held them up, turning them over in his hand, almost hypnotized by the clear shininess of their perfect surfaces.
“What I gotta do?” he asked, suddenly suspicious again, and the grin of incredible luck vanished from his face like it had never existed. The possibility that he would suddenly lose the little beauties that he regarded with an almost religious awe made a ratlike paranoia streak into his brain like mercury rising in a thermometer.
“Just let me park my motorcycle in that bam,” Stone said, turning and pointing to his Harley, about twenty yards off. At the back part of the black leather seat, Excaliber was trying to find a comfortable position as he twisted this way and that on the cool leather, wriggling his paws in the air as if performing some insane dance. “And take care of that there dog too.” Stone prayed that the old fellow liked dogs, because too many people were after him, and those people would know about the dog as well. It would stand out in the town like a sore thumb. Not that Stone had any illusions that he wasn’t walking into a trap, anyway. But he wasn’t one to place the fucking noose over his head and pull the trapdoor as well.
“Bike and dog—that’s all, mister?” the old man said with a laugh of relief as he saw that he was going to get to keep his little fortune, after all. “Why, I loves dogs. In fact…” He whistled twice, and a scampering sound came from inside the plywood hut. Before Stone could warn him to stop, a dog came tearing out and straight toward the bike. It was the strangest damn little thing Stone had ever seen—a hybrid of hybrids, a mixture of every breed under the sun—only about twenty pounds of furry little dachshundy thing, with, Stone saw in growing amazement, only three legs. The fourth had been chopped off about two thirds of the way up, so the dog scampered along on three but, all things considered, with speed and balance.
“Excaliber!” Stone screamed out, raising his arm as the pitbull saw the little barking fuzzball coming toward the bike. Stone knew the animal had never gotten along with other dogs—it wasn’t in his blood. The pitbull rose up in a flash onto the seat and launched itself free with a powerful stroke of pistonlike legs. Stone groaned and closed his eyes for a second, unable to witness the chomping, bloody mess that was about to occur. But when Stone opened his eyes, there was no blood at all. Instead the two dogs stood almost face-to-face, though Excaliber had to look down, as the small mutt was hardly bigger than a cat. Still, the thing gave one of the canine terrors of Colorado a firm but friendly look, and the bullterrier, being impressed by the sheer tenacity of the little sucker, took an instant liking to him and began playing lightly with the dog, running this way and that in front of it, suddenly changing direction as the overfurred mutt joined in the fun.
“Well, looks like those two hit it off,” Stone said with a look of disbelief. Whenever he thought he was starting to understand the pitbull’s modus operandi, the animal suddenly did something completely out of character. Sometimes he wondered if he was the one on the end of the psychological leash in this whole human/animal relationship.
“Just bring your bike on in here, mister. Mister?”
“Howzer,” Stone lied, not wanting the old man to know who he was. It could be his life if he did.
“Well, you just bring that ol’ ve-hi-cle in here.” He led the way, sweeping the cobwebs out of their path from the low rafters. The place obviously hadn’t been used for a long, long time. “Now, this ain’t your Hilton Hotel or nothing,” Pliers said, “but she’s clean, no rats around here—and no leaks neither,” he added proudly, pointing up at the ceiling, which, as far as Stone could see, didn’t show any signs of water damage.
“Used to be a roofer, among other things,” the man said boastfully. “Other people may let their houses fall down around them,” he said cryptically, “but old Pliers takes care of what’s his.”
“Well, this will do just fine,” Stone said, parking the bike behind an old stall so it wasn’t visible from the front. “Just fine.” He headed back out to the yard and saw Excaliber still twisting in tight little circles as the yapping little dog followed ceaselessly after him.
“Now, the only thing is,” Stone went on, “is though my dog and your dog are ol’ pals, usually Excaliber doesn’t get on too well with other animals. Is there any kind of fence or place you could keep him sort of corraled in while I’m in town?”
“Matter of fact, I was just repairing my barbed-wire barrier,” the old man replied. “It had gotten rusty, but I cut out the bad and interwove a batch of new stuff I was able to get my hands on and—” He pulled back a tarp on the ground, and Stone saw a circle of barbed wire on a long roll, ready to be pulled out. “Gotta have something around here,” Pliers said, spitting out a wad of brown. “Goddamn place ain’t nothing but thieves and killers, who’d rape their own grandmother if they
had half a chance.”
“I’m looking for Joey “Cheap” Scalzanni. Have you heard of him?” Stone asked.
“Scalzanni? Hey, mister, he’s the bastard who runs the whole damn show here. Numero uno. Don’t you know what’s going on?”
“Sorry, I’m a stranger in these parts,” Stone said, shrugging his shoulders. “Here… on business.”
“Well, if you ain’t one of them, I don’t know what kind of business you got here. But just looking at you and seeing that you’re basically a decent fellow, I’ll have to tell you that if you go in there, you ain’t coming back. And that being the case, I’ll have to ask you for another one of the dollars for your dog there. ’Cause I’m willing to feed him, but even with these”—he jangled the coins—”a dog’ll eat a hell of a lot of food over the years. And—”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Stone said, reaching into his jacket pocket again. This time he took out ten of the silver circles and handed them over. The old man’s greedy eyes almost popped their sockets as he scooped them in toward himself, and two of them fell.
“Your dog will eat meat—every day. I swear to God. You hear me, mister.” Pliers said, laughing as he dropped to his knee to collect the two errant coins. He was rich now, richer than he had ever dreamed was possible. Why, he would be able to have what he had dreamed of for years now—a hand-cranked phonograph that he had seen in the town. And records. He could listen to music again.
“Oh, God, thank you, thank you,” he sputtered over and over again as he took the fortune of shimmering silver and buried it behind the barn in a foul-looking area of compost and rat corpses. No one would look there. Not even another rat.
Stone told Excaliber to stay, but the dog was so engrossed in his play that he didn’t even see him. Stone knew mat the animal was trained enough to stay where he left it. Besides, Pliers would doubtless serve up a feast of horse meat tonight to celebrate. That would insure the animal’s sticking at home base, lying flat on its back.
Stone checked both his weapons as he walked out into the darkness again, the crickets crackling like the hills were alive with them. He had the Uzi mini-autopistol in his chest holster, and the Ruger .44 Mag at his waist. Both were fully loaded, ready to give the undertaker some overtime. He walked toward the edge of the town which was about half a mile off. Though it was barely five o’clock, the sky seemed as dark as if it were approaching midnight. The clouds above appeared swollen, ready to burst their infected guts of poison at any time. But enough light filtered over from the town so that Stone could stumble along. And as he went, he pulled a few things out from his jacket. Concepts that Dr. Kennedy had shown him when they traveled together. A disguise—how just a few things could take someone’s eye off your main features. A blue wool sailor’s cap and a pair of glasses, which were actually just clear glass but had suave tortoise shell rims that curled back Art Deco fashion. The cap and glasses, plus the five-day growth of stubble on his face, made him look radically different from the Martin Stone any of the bastards might have seen before. Or so he hoped.
Then he was there. There was no mistaking the fact that he had come to the town limits of Keenesburg. For like all Mafia towns, it had its own rules, its own sign of welcome —poles fifteen feet apart with human heads on them. Shrunken, shriveled, twisted little leathery coconuts of brown and black, with eyes turned to black tar the size of grapes staring down at the hesitant traveler. Telling him, “Turn around and leave now, asshole. Unless you’re one tough motherfucker, you’ll most likely end up on this pole with me.”
Stone touched his hat as if tipping it as he walked past the cranial guardians of the place and stepped onto a cracked asphalt road. It was lighter here, as bulbs had been strung up on walls and sticks every hundred feet or so. Unadorned, almostblindinglittlespheresof whitesent outsharp shadows from the two- and three-story buildings that lined both sides of what was apparently the main street. The buildings were all wrecks, windows gone, doors gone, whole structures tilting to one side like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And the few people he saw sitting on rocks or on small logs in front of them looked aboutsas wrecked as their homes. Listless eyes, jaws hanging slack. A few of them tried to talk as Stone walked along, but all he heard was gibberish. It was like a town of the mad, the brain-dead.
And that was one of the better sections, Stone found out as he walked on. For as he drew past the “residential” housing and more into the business section of the town, skid row appeared. Drunken, bleeding wrecks of humanity lined the streets as little concrete pillboxes dispensed shots of rotgut whiskey through their holes. In this town liquor, because of its ability to cause unconsciousness, was the most precious commodity of all. Stone saw figures leaning over the most stupefied of the fallen drunks and going through their clothes, even taking them, so that they were stripped naked. But he did nothing. He wasn’t Jesus Christ.
Here and there rats peered out from rusting gratings or scampered among some of the motionless bodies that appeared to be dead. One was; Stone saw flies buzzing in and out of its mouth and nose. Then the snout of an immense rat ran out of the edge of a basement and under the corpse’s shirt where it began gnawing in a frenzy, as Stone could see from the jerking movements beneath the dead man’s shirt. He was going to have to try to became a travel rep for the place, Stone thought with dark humor, just to keep himself from vomiting. He knew lots of people who would just love to come here for their winter vacation.
As he went on, the bars seemed to get a little better, the clientele if not less ugly, at least able to stand up and walk around, until at last he reached what was clearly the town’s crossroad. Stone came to a corner, turned, and stood frozen as he saw what lay ahead. For never in his wildest dreams had he encountered quite such a vis-ion, quite such a darkness on the face of the earth.
Chapter Fourteen
Stone was staring at a shopping center of crime. A giant mall carrying all the tools and accessories of death. Blocks of two-storied picture windowed stores spread off in every direction in what must have been at least a ten-block-square setup. It didn’t look all that dissimilar to a big suburban mall of old but for one thing—what they were selling. For as Stone walked down one of the corridors that ran through the place, his eyes opened wide. Behind the Plexiglas store windows were all the things a hoodlum, a murderer, or even a full-fledged crime lord could ever want.
Racks of pistols filled one window, machine guns another. On one side two full showrooms of knives, brass knuckles, and other hand-to-hand utensils for heavy-duty maiming or disemboweling. Behind another window sat a wide selection of torture items—electric prods, nooses, chairs with spikes on them, racks, gallows…. All in all, Stone could see, these bastards carried every goddamn thing known to man for the mortification and destruction of human flesh.
The crowds that filled the mall’s walkways as Stone got deeper into it all seemed to be absolutely entranced by the goods on display. If Al Capone had died and gone to heaven, he would have reappeared here, strutting along as the gangsters here did, in their purple and pink and black silk suits. Scarred, smashed-in faces peered like orphans, faces pressed against the inch-thick Plexiglas. Their lifelong dreams were inside those displays. Garrotes, hatches, axes, poisons, bombs, gases. For those who cared, not a thing had been left out.
Stone made a right down one of the many high-ceilinged corridors that filled the place. It obviously had been a real mall once. No one could have built something like this since America had collapsed. But though they had tried to keep it up, the deterioration, the crumbling plaster, couldn’t really be hidden. Patches of ceiling were falling down, the industrial rug on the floors had been meant to be changed every five years. It hadn’t been touched for twelve years, cleaned for three. The dirt of tens of thousands of pairs of boots and shoes, cigarette butts, spit, snot, blood, and numerous other substances had penetrated its once lime-green coloration and turned it a ghastly brownish shade, like mud.
Still, what was left was unq
uestionably impressive. Just the fact that the place was wired and most of its lights and neons were still working was in this day and age an achievement of some magnitude. Stone realized that he was entering a new section of the mall as women replaced weapons behind the windows. Young, beautiful women, naked for the all the world to see—and trying to lure all passersby into their lair, to give them “the Ultimate Pleasure.” Each was a specialist in some aspect of the myriad ways that the human body could “play”—from straight sex, to whips, to S&M and bondage to—for those who could pay—the ultimate sex games where death itself was the object of the players’ affections. Where sexual release itself was predicated on the murder of another. The sickest of the sick in a sick world.
Stone walked for nearly twenty minutes and still didn’t see the same thing twice. But no April. He didn’t even know exactly what he was looking for, but he knew he’d know when he found it. He saw a large neon-lit bar—The Hot Load—sandwiched between some of the sex establishments. He walked in and was met by a virtual explosion of noise, laughter, yelling voices. The place was big and filled with bastards, men with faces that looked like they had had plastic surgery performed on them by gorillas. The huge sons of bitches were loaded down with weapons like they were mobile armories—pistols of every make and functioning order, SMG’s, shotguns, even grenades, and each man was draped with belts of slugs to make sure he had enough ammo to kill wholesale.
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