The Vile Village (8 page)

It was almost sad in a way, Stone thought as he whistled hard again. Excaliber turned and came rushing toward him. The pitbull
was too strong, too good a fighter for its own good. And when threatened, it responded with primitive re-flexes. Too bad if
some little poodle got crushed into pâté.

“Come here, boy, good boy.” Stone laughed as the animal began jumping and bucking around in the air as it was wont to do when
in fits of extreme pleasure. “How you doing, dog?” Stone slapped the animal on the side of the head each time it reached its
pinnacle of trajectory—about six feet off the ground—and it let its big tongue lap out around his wrist and arm, sending out
a mini-spray.

The pitbull didn’t look half bad, considering. There were still tufts of hair missing here and there, like little semibald
patches. But LuAnn insisted that it would all grow back again that one of their dogs had had similar radiation burns when
it explored an atomic-bomb crater about twelve miles off. The ointment she had used on it had totally healed the mutt. Stone
glanced down at his own arm. It didn’t look great, but most of the swelling had diminished. Pinkish bumps about the size of
dimes still lingered on his back and legs. His face was back to normal, other than what looked like a bad boil along one cheek
and flakes of dried skin here and there from the peeling off of his outer epidermal layers. But that would just make him look
a little meaner in Murder City, which was fine with Stone.

LuAnn had told him that the boys who had saved him had found a number of burned creatures just a few miles past where Stone
had been picked up. But as the kids got closer to him they said the animal life was less severely damaged. Apparently the
high-rad rains had been stronger to the east and more diluted to the west. Where you were when the glowing rains hit determined
whether you lived or died. Stone and the dog had been on the right side of the tracks.

“Come on, pal,” Stone said as he threw his pack onto the back of the Harley, which was parked against the side of one of the
barns. The pitbull jumped and came down a little lopsided on top of the seat, nearly falling off. Scampering wildly with all
four legs, it managed to stay atop, though some of its hair did fly off and up into the air as it exerted so much energy.

“Damn,” Stone said as he mounted up in front of the dog when the animal was at last all settled down and the hairs had stopped
floating around. “Hope you don’t go completely bald.” Stone was thinking about how hair loss could be one of the side effects
of radiation poisoning. “Because you’ll look pretty fucking strange all pink, and with the other dogs laughing at your pink
ass wherever you go, you’ll be fighting every damn second of every day.” The pitbull let out a long whine, as if it weren’t
at all in the mood to hear any apocalyptic dog stories. And in a sudden mood of mercy Stone shut up and let the throttle go
on the black Harley, which rocketed forward, screaming out a roar of power like something that should be caged.

T
he sun hovered overhead like a white-hot light bulb about to blow. Stone had to squint to see a damn thing. With the rains
past, the skies had cleared considerably, but a thick haze seemed to hang far overhead, as if the gods had put their dirty
linen out to dry. He eased the Harley down the dirt road slowly at first, not used to the weight of the vehicle beneath him.
Everything seemed new. Stone knew he had been a hair’s breadth from the other side. And now that he was back among the living,
there was a sensation in the pit of his stomach like he had just been on a far-off vacation somewhere.

As Stone and his canine partner approached Cotopaxi they began seeing signs of “civilization,” if that was the word for it.
Dwellings were hardly more than twisted hovels with raw branches with leaves still attached to them placed over them as roofing.
Stone saw collapsing buildings with ripped laundry hanging out their windows, sad-eyed women staring down from the shadowy
innards. Everything was in tatters—the people he began passing along the road had their garments literally falling from their
bodies. But worst of all were the faces of all whom he passed. They were the faces of the already dead, the hopeless. Dark
gray visages that were waiting for but one thing—to die, to be taken off the face of this miserable earth. It could be no
worse in the next life than it was in this one.

As Stone drove on a few more miles, Excaliber began growling and snapping his tongue out at the air in lizard-like fashion,
as if he were trying to catch an insect that had strayed too close. He soon saw what the pitbull was anticipating, for when
they turned around a bend, the road ahead was lined with stands selling steaming pots of food and junk of every kind imaginable.
Both sides of the road were lined with little pathetic stalls, hardly more than pieces of wood with junk balanced around them,
or an occasional table made of hammered tin with items arranged atop it.

But it was a mockery of a real marketplace, for everything that was being sold was of the lowest quality and functioning order.
Knives with broken blades, half pairs of shoes, shirts with no arms, radios and TVs with all their parts and wiring removed,
just the frames left. What in God’s name anyone would do with any of it was beyond Stone’s ken as he slowed the be to a crawl
to avoid hitting any of the people walking around.

The food, too—if it could be called that—was nothing to write home about, either. Brown oranges, their skins almost rotted
away, individual pieces of bread with mold growing on them, bottles of soda with only a thick sludge left on the bottom like
mud. It was a bazaar for the super-poor, the lowest of the low. A place where they might go and buy junk and feel like humans
again, for a moment or two, until the black horror of the worthlessness of what they now owned hit them as they lay shivering
and hungry in their sleep.

“Here, mister, got a nice glove for you,” a voice yelled out.

“Mister, here, got socks all sizes, some even with heels left,” screamed another.

“Cat jerky here,” an old woman cawed out. “Fresh and dehaired. Cat jerky—from the tail, not the paw.” A rack of leather cords
were strung up between two poles, and on them were hanging cats of all sizes, strips of cats like leather, paws, ears, about
a dozen tails all fricasseed and smothered in some kind of sauce. Stone felt his stomach getting a little uppity, though Excaliber
seemed to take quite an interest in the culinary display, his eyes opening wider than they had All morning.

“Mister, mister, you want sell dog, make good stew. Good stew—me split profits with you,” one particularly ugly fellow with
no now or ears kept shouting as they cruised by slowly. Stone could hear Excaliber growling softly behind him as he caught
the man square in the eyes. The appeals for the quick bucks of Pitbull Platter suddenly stopped dead, and the fellow returned
to stirring his huge vat of turnip soup, which he was trying desperately to hawk to the crowds. It was not exactly a breakfast
dish—or any other, for that matter. But it was all he had, so he tried to sell it as if it were precious gold. “Soup, soup,
delicious turnip soup. Good for gonorrhea, cancer, and tumors of the spine.”

It went on for blocks like that. And then it suddenly stopped. Stone passed a final stand, and then there were no more. The
town itself stood ahead, a fairly well-developed place with two- and three-story buildings, most wood-framed, stretching off
on all sides. These weren’t in great shape, either, though most of them did have roofs. But as he headed the bike in and came
up to the first paved street he had driven on for a while, an all black dog, quite large, with burning red eyes, sudenly darted
out from an alley and sprinted straight in front of the bike, forcing Stone to pull hard on the bars and slam the brakes on.
The Doberman/shepherd hybrid gave a quick glance up at the canine sitting behind Stone and gripped its load a little harder
between its daggerlike teeth. Stone blanched, for the midnight-black dog was carrying a hand, a human hand, in its jaws, the
wrist cut about two inches up from the be of the hand. The whole damn thing was still trailing tendrils, dripping a pinkish
liquid in little splotches on the cracked concrete beneath it.

The animal darted ahead suddenly, sprinting like a cheetah, and was gone into the far alley to dine in peace. Stone stared
after it for a few seconds. If God was sending him signs these days, Stone thought darkly, then he would have to say that
that had not exactly been an invitation to Paradise.

He let his heart calm down as the vision of the thing kept burning in his skull like a bad dream. Then he started the be up,
seeing Excaliber staring intently down the dark alley like he wanted to go introduce himself. But Stone snapped his hand around,
steering with the other for a second, and whapped the pitbull on the nose, just so he didn’t start getting any ideas. With
all he’d been through lately, Martin Stone wasn’t in the mood to get in the middle of any dogfights.

Once inside the town, Stone could see that the citizenry had the same dreadful look as those on the outskirts had. They looked
terrified, like they were afraid to let their breath completely out, their eyes darting back and forth like rats’, as if awaiting
attack at any moment. Drunken forms lurched around here and there as he drove on another block or two. And then they were
everywhere. Men lying on their backs, their faces; propped up against the sides of the wood buildings; pissing against walls;
vomiting out their guts; or just lying dead—facedown in the dirt of some alley, as if waiting to be buried only by the inevitable
forces of decay.

Yeah, he was in the right place, all right. There was no mistaking it. The party was here. Seeing a bunch of motor-cycles
parked outside one of the many drinking establishments along the street, Stone headed over, parking his Harley in an alley
just around the side.

“You stay—you hear me, dog?” he said as he dismounted. He pushed the dog’s shoulders down. “Stay. I’ll be back soon. If anyone
touches the Harley, you have my permission to make instant human jerky. Anything else?” He looked at the animal, which stared
back up through a single disgruntled eye, its head tucked between its paws and an unmistakable expression that said, “Better
bring me something, asshole, something tasty or there will be tires with teeth marks in them when you get back.”

Stone checked both his weapons—the mini Uzi with its long clip snapped in on his shoulder holster, and the Redhawk, .44 Mag
Ruger on his hip. Between the two of them they should be able to send out some apt hellos should the need arise. Stone headed
out around the alley and onto the main stretch of bars and flophouses. This seemed to be the central portion of the town as
the joints were positively jumping with sounds, yells, even singing coming out of numerous, doorless doorframes and windowless
windows.

Stone headed toward the place with the bikes out front.
GET DRUNK HERE
, a sign proclaimed above its splintered doorway, which apparently was the bar’s name, as well as its function. And from the
openmouthed comatose bodies all around the street in front of the joint, it seemed to be successful in its services. Stone
kicked a skinny, vomit-soaked Lush out of the way, who pumped both fists into the air without even opening his eyes, mumbled
a few fuck-you’s just to let the world know he was still there, and fell flat over on his side where he began snoring loudly
as Stone stepped over his outstretched feet.

Inside, the place was a madhouse of sound and faces and stench. Stone felt like gagging the moment he walked in. A good hundred
men milled around, a lot of them as foul-looking as anything he’d ever seen, even up in the deep mountains. Stone swore that
not one of them had ever seen a bar of soap. It was one thing not to wash for a few days, or even a week or two if you were
traveling, but these fellows hadn’t bathed in years.

Stone heard gunshots and jerked, his hand starting to reach for his own tools. But as nothing ripped into his flesh, he slowed
the quick draw down and raised his glance to where something was moving. A body was tied up with a rope around its neck, spinning
around and around as men from around the square-shaped bar were firing up at it. Laughter erupted here and there as pieces
of the thing—its now, a few fingers, an arm or leg—fell off. Bets were placed about what would fall next, drinks sloshed down,
and the pistols roared. Apparently this was the main entertainment of the place, Stone noted as he made his way over to one
of two long bars that faced each other on opposite sides of the room.

Everyone seemed huge, like Neanderthals in town for some fresh clubs. They all had barrel chests and wore animal-skin coats
stitched up like the scars on Frankenstein’s back. Their faces were snot-encrusted, and the foul food they ate precipitated
numerous belches and farts that stank to such high heaven that Stone doubted another bear would get near them if they were
tossed back out in the woods. They were all so busy bullshitting with one another that they didn’t even notice Stone, a relative
pipsqueak, slide through their ranks.

“Barkeep,” Stone shouted, trying to catch the big, beefy bartender’s eye behind the counter. After a few unsuccessful tries,
the man came over and gave him a skeptical once-over.

“Are you sure you’re in the right place?” the man asked. And from his twisted snout that had been broken a hundred times,
and the general scarred appearance of his face, Stone knew that the man had a certain clientele in mind for his bar.

“Yeah,” Stone replied cheerfully. “This is the Get Drunk, right? Well, I want to get drunk.” He slammed a silver dollar down
on the counter and pulled his hand away to reveal the shining coin, one of twenty he had brought from his father’s stash back
in the bunker. There were more there, but Stone wasn’t worrying about running out of spending cash. Some-how he doubted he
was going to live long enough to have to declare bankruptcy.