The Vile Village (9 page)

The barkeep picked the coin up and bit it hard. Then he sniffed it with his huge, almost piglike nostrils, which looked as
if they’d been rotted way away by acid. Satisfied, he dropped the coin in a steel pail on the floor and lifted a quart bottle
of something.

“Just a glassful, thanks,” Stone said.

“We sell by the quart here, mister,” the keep said sharply, looking at him like he had a bug on his eyeball. “What are you,
a goddamn pansy? You said you wanted to get drunk? Here!” He shoved the big bottle filled with a brownish sub-stance that
swirled around in the flickering flames of the numerous lamps that had been nailed up all over the place. Stone glanced quickly
around at the other drinkers and saw that in fact everyone was holding one of the big quart bottles. Some held two, taking
alternate guzzles from first one then the other. There seemed to be two basic drinks here, the brown one and the green one.
Stone took a sip of his brown bottle and had to do all he could not to spit it out all over the bear size, skunk-clad thug
in front of him.

After a few seconds the brew actually seemed to send out a warm glow as it flowed down his throat. Whatever else they put
in the bottle, there was alcohol in the damn thing too. He turned around and surveyed the place. The bar was built of wood
and was in pretty good shape, considering. There were bullet holes everywhere, and as Stone watched, the corpse target hanging
from the ceiling was lowered down. It had turned into hardly more than a skeleton with a few strips of pink stuff hanging
off it. The men had to have their fun. Another was strung up. This corpse looked at least three days old—the arms stiff and
pointing straight out at the sides like Christ on the cross. The face and body were green, and the dead man had had a hell
of a stomach, which poked out like a watermelon from his otherwise skinny and chicken-boned physique. But whatever was left
of him started disappearing fast as guns were pulled, and the thing was riddled with slugs before it had even reached the
rafters.

As Stone grew used to the place and started really observing things, he saw that the bar was completely segregated. On one
side of the room, the far side, were bikers and their hangers-on. The men were clearly identified by their black motorcycle
jackets and the knives they wore all over their bodies. On the side where Stone was, were mountain-men types, raw, crude,
with the animal skin coats he’d first noticed, and immense side arms or rifles that looked like they could take out a full-grown
moose with a single shot. There was an invisible line down the center of the bar beyond which men attached to either group
would not step. They would step right up to it, but not over. From time to time men would come to its very edge and sneer
at one another, but that was it. It was all some kind of insane game that Stone didn’t quite get the point of.

“What the hell’s going on here?” he asked the barkeep, who was leaning with his elbow onto the heavily scuffed counter that
ran the entire length of the sixty-foot-long establishment. “I mean, these guys going to fight each other or what?”

“You’re a stranger, that’s for sure,” the barkeep said, looking Stone up and down with contempt. “It ain’t good not to know
what’s going on around here, pal. It’s the way to get killed.” Then he remembered the silver dollar in Stone’s pocket, and
thinking that perhaps there might be more, he suddenly softened and smiled at Stone in a brotherly way.

“But then I was a stranger once myself, wasn’t I now?” Stone took a small sip of the brown mud in his bottle. God, it tasted
foul. If these sons of bitches were drinking two bottles at a time of this brew, they were more brain-damaged that he had
imagined. “See,” the barkeep went on, leaning even farther forward and talking in a whisper like he didn’t want anyone around
them to notice, not that anyone would, since the target corpse in the center of the room had just taken a .50-cal. slug right
in its mouth, and teeth were spraying out over the crowd, which tried to catch them for good luck.

“These is the two gangs what runs Cotopaxi. This side of the room is the Strathers bunch, the other side’s the Head Stompers
and their gofers. These boys hate each other, let me tell you. I mean, this town is one pie—and there’s two sets of hands
in it. But they can’t afford to go to all-out war ’cause they both knows that they’d wipe the other one out. It’s like a—you
know—a stalemate or something. At least for now, until one of them can get the upper hand. They’s always trying to get the
upper hand. But somehow and I can’t really remembers why—maybe it was when I started having the corpses up there and it became
the talk of the town—anyway, both bunches of them started hanging out here. They eye each other real mean, but they don’t
usually go for it. Except once in a while. I guess they likes to have a neutral meeting ground to strut their stuff and make
threats and sometimes deals.

“In fact, the top man of the Stompers, Bronson himself, is here. He’s over at that round table far on the right there, the
guy with the tattoos all over his face. And Vorstel, too, Vorstel Strathers—see, he’s at the end of the bar this side. He’s
the one wearing the mink coat, looks about seven feet tall. In fact, he’s heading on seven and a half from what I been told.
Looks like his face got chew up by a bear, which it did when he was a young ’un. Give you a little advice, friend,” the barkeep
said with a dark gleam in his one good eye. The other was just a piece of polished marble, Stone could see as the barkeep
leaned even closer and whispered conspiratorially,“Don’t even get
near
them guys. I mean, don’t let them hear you breathing. ’Cause I seen ’em turn on a man like a mongoose on a scorpion. Bastards
will just take people out for even getting too close.” He winked and pulled back as another voice called for some “green shit”
down at the far end of the bar.

Stone turned and took in both of them, looking through the moving heads of the crowd so he could only see them from time to
time as people shifted out of the direct line of vision. But that was enough. Both of them were bad. He could feel it in his
bones. Perhaps it was part of the gift, or the curse, that told him that both gang leaders—not to mention every other son
of a bitch in the place—were death-dealing bastards who he’d better not turn his back on for a second unless he wanted to
find a blade sticking out of his spine.

But if the bar was the Rick’s Joint for the scum of the earth, it was also a place where those looking to be “bad,” wanting
to make a fast name for themselves, came as well. The killers, the gunslingers and murderers, the fast drawers and assassins
for hire gathered there. It was a tough world. A lot of guys thought they were the baddest of all. A lot of men were wrong.

“Hey, yo,” a voice suddenly yelled out from the center of the room. The howls and laughter of the crowd quieted slightly to
see what the commotion was as a tall, thin dude all decked out in black leather from boot to chin sneered in the direction
of the bikers, the main table where Bronson and some of his top boys were “entertaining,” stripping and fondling a few whores
who had just been delivered to one of their flesh houses. They stopped their drinking and squeezing of young flesh, and looked
up, wondering if there might be some amusement tonight, after All.

“I’m talking to you, tattoo face,” the man shouted again, and he tilted a wide-brimmed leather hat back and rested both hands
on his twin Colt .38s that rested in heavily embroidered gun belts on each side. The guy looked sharp—Stone had to give him
that. Too sharp, like something out of an old Western, except for the leather. And though the guns-linger would have scared
half the people in the Western world with his sunken Boris Karloff cheeks and the general pallor of death that hung over him,
Stone had a feeling that the killer had just made the mistake of his life.

“Should I kill him, boss?” A muscle-bound, bald monstrosity with pins piercing his ears and now, and no shirt over his chest,
which looked big enough to build a doghouse in, asked his boss.

“Yeah, would you mind, Pins?” Bronson said. “I got a stomachache—don’t feel like gettin’ up.”

“Sure, boss,” the bicep-bulging biker said cheerfully, chains wrapped around the top of each huge bicep. “So you want to die,
scumbag?” the second-in-command Head Stomper said, stepping from around the table. “Well, I’ll be glad to—”

If the leather-clad gunman had been waiting for the biker to finish the sentence, it was the last mistake he ever made. For
with a blur of hand speed that was amazing for someone his size, Pins grabbed one of the chains from his shoulder and whipped
it hard out into the air. Attached to the end of the eight-foot link chain was a curved scythe about eighteen inches long.
Built to cut grass, it had since had its occupation changed, but it still cut real good. The gunman, here to make a rep and
a few quick bucks, had his hands on his pistols, both of them just clearing leather when the scythe, whistling like an artillery
shell, sliced right into his neck. The biker had released the blade at a sideways angle, and it tore into the gunman’s throat
like a carving knife going into the Sunday roast. The man’s whole neck just sort of exploded before he even had time to scream.
His hands, still resting on the pistols they hadn’t had a chance to draw, started jerking wildly, unable to lift them another
inch. Then, sort of hopping sideways like a rabbit with muscular problems, the man’s head tilting to one side where it had
been cut by the sharp blade, the corpse-thing managed to dance around the floor for about twelve feet in a half circle before
it collapsed in a bloody heap, the black leather dyed red.

The place erupted in a bedlam of cheers and screaming. The blood lust was strong here. Most everybody in the place was a murderer.
And they always enjoy seeing other killers’ handiwork. Pins ripped back hard on the chain, and the scythe leapt back through
the air and into his hand like it was alive. He held the bone handle and wiped the blade free of blood on his brown leather,
bullet-hole-ridden pants, the only garment he wore. The biker held the blade up and bowed to his boss, Bronson, who seemed
bored by the whole display.

As Stone watched the bloody drama an idea suddenly took root in his head, a way to do these bastards in—all of them. It appeared
in his brain fully blown, like a creature that incubates inside its egg until its an adult and then pops out completely grown
with fur, teeth, and all. Martin Stone didn’t know if it was the stupidest thing he had ever thought of, but he suddenly wondered
if he should sign his life insurance over to the dog. Because it just might need a new master in about one minute. Taking
a final minuscule swig of the slime in his bottle, he put it down, spat it out like mouthwash, and stepped forward through
the crowd until Has, still basking in the glory of the killing, stood about eight yards away, right in front of him.

“Hey, asshole,” Stone yelled out, his tongue still stinging from the sip. Pins stopped spinning his scythe around in the air
and took a look at whatever idiot was foolish enough to want to catch
his
attention. Stone smirked as he saw that the man’s eyes were fully on him. “Hey, asshole, I hear your mother likes to fuck
plaguers and rad mutants. I got a truck-load of them outside. So why don’t you go unchain her and we can all have some fun.”

“I
must have got something in my ear from that leather idiot’s exploding face,” the biker said, slapping himself hard on the
side of the head. “’Cause I just thought I heard a dumb little asshole say something so horrible to me that I’d kill me own
father—bless his syphilitic soul—were he to say the same to me.” The bar broke up with those words, even some of the Struthers
boys let their faces move around in some sort of expression of humor.

“Well, whatever diseases your father has don’t concern me,” Stone said, letting his hands stay low but not obviously near
his weapons. “It’s what your mother got that I’m worried about.” There was more laughter, this time entirely from the Strathers
side of the room as the bikers faces all got ice-cold and not amused at all.

“Since I already killed once tonight, I was thinkin’ ‘bout lettin’ you slide,” Pins said as the rest of his crew and Bronson,
his tattooed face staring at Stone like he was a bug that should be squashed under a boot, all watched. “But you shouldn’t
be sayin’ those things about my mom ’cause though I look like something out of one of your nightmares, I actually got a soft
spot for my of mom, bless the dead bitch. And you just made me real—”

The huge biker stopped the sentence in mid-stride, and his hand whipped out the link chain with the glistening scythe on the
end. But Stone had seen the maneuver once already, and he was damned if he was going to be the second butchering job of the
evening. He’d been keeping his eyes dead on the biker’s eyes. The Major had always told him to do that. It was just one of
many tricks that Major Clayton R. Stone, ex-Special Forces, ex-Special every goddamn thing knew: “Don’t look for the hand
or the foot to move, always the eyes. That’s where even the most accomplished of killers will reveal himself. There’s always
a flash in the eye just before a man strikes. Learn to see that spark of murderous intent and you can anticipate any son of
a bitch out there, I don’t care who he is, and take him out first.” It had worked for Stone’s father—the man had fought a
lot of men—but he had died of a heart attack, clutching at his chest, face turning blue inside the self-contained bunker that
he had had built into the side of a mountain.

Stone had always made a point of paying heed to the Major’s words, even if the two of them hadn’t gotten along famously. Thus
he was already out of the way at the instant he saw the “death gleam” in Pins’s eyes. The huge ringed hand snapped the chain
out hard, and the scythe shot straight for the spot in which Stone had just been, searching for fresh flesh to mow. But it
found only air swirling with the tobacco and marijuana smoke of the patrons of the filthy place.