The Vile Village (20 page)

Stone pulled himself out straight again and slashed at the binding of the other hand, which cut Loose with a single slice.
Then he leaned forward again and freed his right foot. But time was running out—he could hear them rising, untangling themselves,
coming around each side of the table. He was reaching to cut the final binding when Vorstel appeared from the left, his face
snarling like a dog with rabies, foam and whatnot bubbling out from his enraged lips. He raised his immense hunting knife
and started to bring it down like a machete, but Stone lashed out with his free leg. It was just a snap kick, not even that
hard, but then they didn’t have to be when they were aimed right against the opening of the kneecap. And this one was right
on target. The huge killer buckled and crashed to the ground like a safe thrown from a second-story window.

Stone sliced at the binding, which took two cuts to sever. He felt the shadow of Rudolf closing in on him from the left, just
as his leg pulled free. Stone didn’t even try to block. Instead, he moved in the direction of his body, which was slightly
facing forward, and somersaulted low to the ground. Rudolf’s blade descended like an ax, slamming straight into the side of
the table. So immense was his strength and momentum that the super-hardened steel blade bit right into the stainless-steel
table for several inches with a shrill fingernail-on-blackboard kind of sound.

But Stone was gone—the somersault took him right over Vorstel, who was just starting to rise up onto one knee, lifting his
knife again. Stone used the big ganger’s back as a kind of ramp, and he rolled right over the top, coming down about two yards
away against one of the concrete walls that ringed the basement chamber. He turned on a dime, and not too soon, since Vorstel
had gotten up and was charging at him like a maddened bull. With a tilt of his head Stone dodged the knife blade that was
thrust out suddenly. He stepped quickly to the right at a forty-five-degree angle, using the momentum of Vorstel’s body to
let it go slightly past him. Gripping the push dagger in his left hand, Stone went into boxing stance and jabbed out hard
into the huge ganger’s left rib cage.

The knife flew in and out like a jackhammer. Vorstel didn’t even quite know what happened, though a little tremor of something
ran across his face. As he turned to face Stone, he felt another stab of pain in his gut, then in the side of his arm. Stone
just kept jabbing out, circling quickly around the man as he kept his eye on Rudolf, who was stuck for a few seconds trying
to dislodge his knife, which he had embedded in the steel operating table. It was easier to get it in than to get it out.

Vorstel didn’t know what the hell was happening. He was huge, a monster, had killed countless numbers of men, usually with
one blow. But Stone was fast, and he wasn’t about to fight the oversized killer’s way. He fought in his own nasty style—it
was called survival. So as Vorstel lunged wildly forward over and over again—it being the one method of fighting he had ever
had to practice—Stone danced around the gang topman, snapping out the hand with the blade poking out from between his middle
two fingers. Again and again the knife ripped into flesh, then pulled out. All over Vorstel’s body, big blotches of red were
oozing through his clothes. He was a pincushion, one that bled.

Suddenly Stone saw the man’s face cloud up for a second, as boxers do when they’ve taken a hard shot. Vorstel stopped for
a moment, looked down at the butchered flesh that was his own body, and turned a ghostly shade of green. For he realized why
he hurt—he hadn’t even seen the blade in Stone’s hand, just the fist snapping out. But now he saw it. And having killed so
many, Vorstel knew just by the amount of blood streaming from him, from the number of stab wounds, that he was a dead man.

But Stone wasn’t going to allow the dying man to call a priest. He saw his chance and took it. The instant he saw Vorstel
look down and lose his concentration for a moment, Stone stepped right in front of the gang leader and ripped the blade across
the man’s throat. Right to left, then left to right. He stepped back as the throat exploded out in an avalanche of red, which
splattered over the floor and Stone’s boots and pants. Vorstel’s knife fell from his fingers as he threw both hands over the
throat, gripping it, as if trying to strangle himself. But as much as he tried to hold it all inside, like someone stuffing
dirt under a rug, there was just a little too much junk pouring out of him. He staggered backward and slammed hard into the
wall, cracking the back of his head, though it hardly mattered anymore.

“
Cchh, yhhhhgghh!
” He was clearly trying to say some-thing as he stared right at Stone, but for the life of him, Stone couldn’t understand
what it was. Then he dropped to the floor in a sitting position, and his hands fell away from the throat, the lifeless eyes
still focused on the man who had just killed him.

Stone heard a sudden sound and whipped around, holding the knife at ready. But he was too late—Rudolf was there, right in
his face, the huge knife with the cracked bone handle coming in like an ICBM from hell. Stone knew in a fraction of an instant
that he was a dead man. That he couldn’t duck, move, dive, parry, or stab the bastard who was just a foot from his nose and
coming at about ninety miles per hour. His whole body tensed up as it prepared to die. And then, though his father would have
whipped his hide, Stone closed his eyes just for a second as the knife came right toward them.

He waited for the blow but felt nothing. Then he heard a wet thud and a gurgling sound. By the time his eyes opened, only
a second later, Rudolf was already flying past. And embedded in his back was a round saber-saw blade a foot in diameter. The
steel blade had penetrated the man’s back, severed his spine like a piece of balsa wood, cut through his lungs, popping them
like balloons, and then continued out through the front so that about ten of the jagged, inch-long cutting teeth poked out,
like the jaws of some hideous larva eating its way from the inside out. The man kept running past Stone, as if he were late
for his own funeral, and slammed headfirst into one of the concrete walls, smashing his face into bloody mashed potatoes.
The whole mess just sort of slithered to the floor, where it lay all ripped and red like something ready for landfill.

Stone turned his head and saw the Bronson kid. He was standing about thirty feet away across the room and was holding his
stump of a hand with an expression of raw pain dancing across his face. But the little fucker had clearly thrown the blade,
one of the brothers’ many toys lying around the room. The kid had thrown it all the way across the basement and managed to
take out a killer whom a hundred other men hadn’t been able to. And even in the midst of his agony, the kid managed a grim
smile for Stone, as if to say, “We fucked these assholes up pretty bad, didn’t we?”

Stone looked back across the vast distance of blood and savagery that separated him from the biker boy and whispered, “Yeah.”

S
tone tourniqueted the kid’s hideous stump. There wasn’t a hell of a lot else he could do. The biker brat needed an operation
at a hospital with a team of neurosurgeons, which, since there were no functioning hospitals in the entire country, was an
unlikely proposition to say the least. But once the main stream of blood was slowed so he at least knew the kid wouldn’t bleed
to death, Stone knew he couldn’t do any more. He retrieved his pistols from where they were hanging on a wall and handed the
kid one of the dead brothers’ blood-splattered guns—a World War II Luger all scraped and bent like it had been through about
ten wars. The kid seemed reluctant at first to accept the weapon. He had been trained in killing multiple opponents with knives,
chains, blades, and tricks of every kind. But not guns. His biker clan used them only as a last resort. But after thinking
about the fact that he had only one hand now—and wasn’t feeling his greatest—the kid took it and gripped it hard.

Stone didn’t know if the little bastard couldn’t, or just wouldn’t, speak, but he didn’t utter a word to Stone. He just looked
around furtively all the time. He seemed more animal than human, and Stone felt a strange revulsion for the muscle-bound eight-year-old
miniature of his father’s barrel-chested, tree-limbed physique.

“Come on,” he said, motioning once he had his firearms strapped back on and loaded. Moving slowly, the barefoot kid behind
him, clad only in black leather pants, Stone led the way to the back staircase. As far as he could determine, the main stairs
were at the opposite end. There was just a chance that this was a service or emergency exit, because he knew there would be
a shitload of guards in front of the place. Stone went up the stairs, taking from his pocket the push dagger, which was still
soaked in red from the throat it had recently cut.

He pushed open the thick wooden door at the top a fraction of an inch at a time. They were in luck. It opened to a backyard
filled with refuse and junk, and a chain-link fence about forty yards off, and then woods another hundred yards or so beyond.
Glancing down, Stone saw that the biker kid, even though horribly wounded, had a look of anticipation on his slightly demonic
face. He lived to fight, to kill, to let blood. His father had schooled him well.

Stone pushed open the door hard and saw, to his horror, a guard leaning back on a chair reading a dirty magazine. So engrossed
was he in the size forty-fours staring up at him that he didn’t catch the movement until Stone was upon him. Stone kicked
out the legs of the chair at the same time he slammed his hand over the reader’s forehead, pushing him straight back into
the cement walk behind him. The back of the thug’s skull cracked in twenty places, and the whole head seemed to cave in like
an egg hit by a hammer. But Stone was gone by the time the body hit the ground. He and the boy shot across the yard filled
with debris from the past—pieces of rusting cars, broken washing machines and refrigerators, all the things that had slowly
disappeared from use since electricity and every appliance it had powered had also disappeared from the territory.

The kid was a little speed demon, pushing Stone to exert himself to his limits just because he couldn’t stand the idea of
being beaten by a fucking eight-year-old. Leaping wreckage, running right over jagged springs and piles of busted bricks,
the two reached the link fence at exactly the same instant. They both kept their momentum going, pushing off with the last
step so they landed two thirds of the way up the ten-foot-high fence. Then they were over and off into the field, filled with
weeds and broken glass. Stone winced when he thought of the kid’s feet going over the sharp edges, but apparently they were
so callused, or the kid was so tough, that he ran on without the slightest faltering or expression of pain.

Then they were at the woods, and both stopped short and tamed to see if they were being pursued. But they weren’t. Stone turned
to the junior biker and said, breathing hard, “Thanks kid.”

The biker heir looked at Stone with that animal stare that he seemed to take on the whole world with, like some kind of wild
child raised by the dogs or the wolves, then his mouth moved into a grimace, as if it were hard for him even to say the word.

“Thanks,” he hissed out like a mountain cat. And suddenly he turned and was gone. Gone in a flash into the bushes and shadows
of the forest. Stone turned and headed in the other direction, toward the whorehouse. He had to get the damn dog out of there.
The bastards would take it out on Excaliber, of that Stone had no doubt. He carefully made his way to the brothel, through
the ten blocks of alleys and side streets. As he turned the last comer he looked around, checking for the reflection of muzzles
at the windows. They hadn’t come here yet. Maybe they still didn’t know he’d escaped.

But as Stone took one more step toward the place, some twenty yards off, he saw that he was completely and terribly wrong.
They
did
know and they
were
waiting. Jayson flanked by a half dozen lower-echelon gangers, blocked his path. Yet Jayson and his thugs didn’t particularly
concern Stone. What concerned Martin Stone was the lion that Jay-son was holding on a chain leash. The lion that was staring
at Stone and licking its chops.

“I underestimated you from the start, Mr. Preacher Boy,” the effeminate gang leader said. He was now dressed in some kind
of lime-green toga that covered his body from neck to foot, and one of those omnipresent silk scarves that he wore wrapped
around his neck and the lower part of his face. His thin cheeks were heavily rouged for the occasion, and dark purple lipstick
outlined his mouth in a heart shape. “I knew you were tough, but I didn’t realize you were smart W. But then you’re not that
smart or you wouldn’t be standing there now, would you?” He laughed, a little chirp of disdain, and then reached down to unchain
the lion.

“I really ought to thank you in a way. It’s funny how things work out.” Jayson grinned. “With my brothers dead, l run the
show now. I always hated the dumb bastards, anyway. It’s too bad you couldn’t have stuck around. You and I would have made
a great team.” He blew Stone a kiss, then pulled the clasp back on the lion’s chain. “But of course now I
have
to kill you.” The lion looked around, confused for a moment, until Jayson pointed at Stone and said, “Kill him, Pussy. Rip
his guts out.”

The lion had taken but one step forward toward its target when they all heard a howling, smashing, growling, and breaking
sound that was extremely loud. Even the lion stopped, startled, the mane on its neck going up like a porcupine. The whole
crew looked up at the second story of the whorehouse where the unearthly sounds were coming from just in time to see an insane
dog burst right through the window, sending the glass, frame, and all exploding out into the street. Excaliber landed on a
small six- by five-foot terrace outside the windowsill, trailing a long chain that was pulling the entire brass bed behind
it, one end of which had reached the wall at the window. The pitbull stared down at the scene below, instantly figuring out
just what the hell was going on. Then it launched itself like a NASA rocket headed for the moon.