The Cutthroat Cannibals (23 page)

If his wrists had been tied a little bit looser it was possible. But the bastards knew their fucking knots. For as much as
he squirmed, pulled from side to side, ripped his wrists at the leather thongs, he couldn’t get them loosened even a fraction
of an inch. Cannibals apparently had their accessory skills. What would the fucking major have done? Stone tried to imagine
his old man caught in this situation. But he never would have allowed it to happen. Probably wouldn’t even have allowed himself
to get caught in the fucking landslide in the first place. But try as he might to conjure up the major’s image in the fading
light of the day he couldn’t, no face appeared in the clouds or rose from the flames. Stone was alone, unutterably alone,
and he had no way out.

Then it was dark. Just like that and the two white slugs came over in their wheelbarrows. Again they argued, snapping and
snarling at one another like an old couple married forty years, about who should have the honor of being the first meal of
the evening. Stone kept his cool this time. He knew he’d need every ounce of strength. He’d make his move when they came to
take him. There’d be dozens of the subhumans around but he’d have to try.

But it wasn’t Stone or the girl whom they chose first. Rather her still unconscious brother, who the brothers agreed, after
twenty minutes of vicious screaming catfight, had to be the first since he was closest to death and they didn’t want to lose
any of their precious fresh meat. The young man was cut down and loaded into a third wheelbarrow. Then the entire procession
was wheeled over to a blood-splattered wooden table as Charise screamed and screamed again.

“Roger, Roger, please God no—don’t take him. Oh no, no, no.” But there wasn’t a thing she or Stone could do about it. Her
father stared out blankly as if looking at infinity. The cro-mags took the naked body, now coated with orange and green creams
and sauces a half-inch thick, and threw it right up in the center of the table, which Stone could see even from a distance,
by the flames of the cooking fires off to one side, was covered with blood and a thick, oily dried slime of the past bodies
that had been consumed on it. The bastards had their own picnic table, half-broken umbrella above it and all. A regular family
fucking outing.

As Stone and the girl looked on in horror they saw that the slime weren’t even going to cook Roger. They were going to eat
him alive. The albinos had their underlings push the wheelbarrows they were riding in forward and up to the table, one on
each side so they were facing each other. Then the cro-mags tilted the wheelbarrows forward, holding the things up at an angle
using their shoulders to keep them upright against the great weight pushing down on them. The albinos reached greedily forward
from across the table, and each holding a huge kitchen knife sharp as a razor, dug right into the still living, breathing,
though mercifully unconscious man.

Charise gasped as a long red gash appeared across his chest and stomach. Then they reached in and ripped out still-beating
organs, squirming pancreas, rippling kidney, and popped them right into their mouths, chewing and laughing lustily over the
fine taste. Then she couldn’t look and only Stone remained staring at the dreadful sight. They cut into the living youth again
and again, as they plucked his eyeballs from his head, digging them out with olive tongs and popping them down whole, like
fresh clams.

Stone watched as they cracked open the skull with large calipers and argued over the brain, fighting for it with their hands,
grabbing at it so the mass of pink stuff just dissolved between their fingers and squeezed out onto the table and down to
the ground. He watched as they sliced open the chest and again fought over the treasure inside. But one stabbed the other
in the arm and reached in quickly, grabbing the still beating organ.

“It’s mine, you turd, we agreed last week: you get the brains, I get the heart.”

“But you TOOOOOK the brains,” the other screamed back hysterically, licking at what little of said substance it could from
its fat white fingers.

“Well, too late now,” the high-pitched voice squealed as its hands pulled hard and ripped the heart right out of the youth’s
open chest cavity, trailing tendrils and veins and all kinds of spurting shit. The albino held it and looked at it as one
might look at an exotic species of jungle bird. Then he bit into the thing even as it kept beating, jerking spasmodically
away from the broken teeth. But the heart, to say the least, didn’t have too many defenses, and the cannibal tore into it
with gusto, taking huge, still beating bites of it, which flopped around like fish as they swam down his gullet and into the
festering lake of his huge stomach filled with rotting foods from days past.

Stone watched while every square inch of the youth was carved into an unrecognizable bloody carcass like a turkey left over
from Thanksgiving dinner. There wasn’t going to be a hell of a lot to munch on come midnight. But then Stone realized they
had more to eat. Much more: him.

It had been dark about an hour, and the brothers albino were just finishing up the last of what had been a man, when Stone
suddenly sensed, felt something behind him in the shadows. He turned, moving very slowly, though the brothers, nearly a hundred
feet off, their faces covered with blood as they chewed out the marrow from the bones, were hardly in a position to notice
him.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Stone hissed under his breath. It was the dog! The fucking dog was alive and it had come to save his
ass. The animal looked curiously out of the bushes, somehow sensing that it shouldn’t come rushing ahead barking and tail
wagging and everything. Stone made a shushing sound with his mouth, a signal he had tried in the past to make the pit bull
understand meant play it cool, boy, real cool. The dog slithered around the dirt like a snake and came right up behind the
stake Stone was tied to. It let out a low guttural growl as if asking, what next?

Stone wriggled his hands tied behind his back around the pole and whispered, “Bite rope, dog! Bite the fucking ropes, you
hear me?” The animal put its wet nose close to where Stone was wiggling and seemed to poke around there like a hog rooting
for vegetables, trying to figure out just what the hell he had in mind.

“The rope—bite—the—fucking—rope,” Stone said very slowly and deliberately, as if talking slow would make it all a little clearer.
Somehow, it did. For the animal, suddenly realizing that the ropes had something to do with the Chow Boy’s predicament, nuzzled
up close, standing up on his hind legs and opened his jaws about an inch. Moving in close and making sure that he was only
getting leather, not flesh, Excaliber closed the teeth slowly until he made contact with the material. Then he grunted and
snapped hard with all the strength of his breed’s jaw, over two thousand pounds per square inch. Even leather cord as tough
as this wasn’t meant for that kind of stress. The cord snapped apart in the pit bull’s mouth and it pushed back down, landing
on the ground with a soft thud.

“Stay,” Stone ordered out of the corner of his mouth as he pulled his hands partially but not all the way around just to make
sure they were completely free. They were. He looked over at Charise, whose eyes were closed, her head turned sideways, not
able to bear to look at the remains of her brother.

“Charise, baby,” Stone whispered sharply out of the corner of his mouth. “Listen to me, you’ve got to snap out of it. I’ve
gotten free. I’m going to try to make a break for the car. Now I’ve got to know. The machine gun you told me about, remember?”

Her head suddenly snapped up out of its daze and she focused on him. “Yes, the machine gun—”

“Is it loaded? Did they take the feed away or leave it all there? Is the thing operable?” Stone prayed what the answers would
be. For with them lay their only chance at getting out of this foul-smelling nightmare alive.

“Yes, yes, I think they just left everything,” she replied, her eyes suddenly burning with a touch of fire as she realized
what was going on. “I was conscious the whole time we were brought to camp. I remember them looking at it and then saying
they would worry about it later. They had to eat one of the other men they’d caught before he died. They just threw the cover
over it, that’s right, yeah, covered it with that tarp, but didn’t touch a thing. I’m sure of it. But how did you get free?”
she asked as she saw Stone swing his arms around from behind the post.

“Can’t talk, baby. Before they get hungry again, I’ve got to make my move,” he replied. “All right, come on now, dog,” Stone
hissed in the darkness. “If you’re ever going to earn your keep”—which he knew as he said it had never been much—“now’s the
fucking time. You’re going to have to run interference for me to that car across there.” Stone shut up. The dog didn’t need
a fucking scorecard. Everybody was the enemy. It was easy.

He pushed himself off and forward. Which was all well and good except in his excitement Stone had forgotten he had a broken
leg. He got about two steps, the dog darting on ahead snarling and baring its teeth, when he tumbled onto his ass in the dirt.

“Great!” Stone snarled at himself in supreme humiliation. But even as he hit the ground he was up and moving again, hobbling
along on one leg. Just ahead of him, moving through the encampment carrying a long pole with empty water gourds over her shoulder,
was a bare-breasted hairy cro-mag female, heading off to get water so the brothers albino could wash down their recently chewed
repast. Stone slammed his knee up out of the darkness before the woman even knew what hit her. He felt bad about hitting a
woman, but not too bad, especially when the excrement-smelling, hairy, low-browed, toothless hag he sent into sleepyland looked
as if she should have been in
Return of the Ape Woman
instead of carrying water in Colorado.

Stone grabbed the stick and slammed it down into the ground right up against his broken leg, making a stiff sort of instant
splint. Now he could move, he found out after just a few lurches forward. And once he saw that he could, Stone didn’t look
back. The dog had cooled its snarling in the darkness, waiting for Stone to get his shit together. When it saw the Chow Boy
coming out of the flame-flickering darkness like a maniac ready to kick ass, then the dog was ready too. It opened its jaws
wide and the two of them took off side by side. They had to move right past the cooking fire next to the cannibals’ table.
It was dark now, the cooking fire being allowed to burn low, for apparently they planned to charcook everyone else.

But he hadn’t gotten halfway across the open ground when the shit hit the fan. A group of five of the cro-mags dragging over
a huge cooking spit from storage saw the two of them and let out a screaming chorus, jumping up and down to alert the camp.
They threw their load to the ground and came forward on all fours, broken teeth bared like animals. Stone shuddered but he
didn’t stop. Timing himself so he was on his good leg he brought up the stick he was holding and slammed one of the subhumans
right under the jaw. The sucker flew straight up into the air and then stumbled backwards. Even as Stone’s foot came down
he swung the stick back to the ground to help catch most of the force.

The dog tore into the next man who was trying, stupidly, to block the way. Stupidly because when you stand in the way of a
charging pit bull without a bazooka to take it out, you make a big mistake. The slave futilely swung at the dog with a bone
club, but the animal merely sidestepped the blow and sank its teeth into the attacker’s knee. The whole section of the hairy
leg ripped out in a spray of blood, bone and gristle. But the pit bull was already past him and on, eyes darting back and
forth searching for the next fool.

Three more of the beastie boys flew into the fray from the left. Stone had to stop completely, balancing himself on one leg
as he swung hard in a wide arc with the pole. He caught two of them in the head at once and both went flying. The dog leaped
straight up from the ground at the face of the third and caught him around the chin, biting down so hard the man’s whole lower
jaw fractured into five parts and his face sort of bent in like an accordion. The dog spat out the dripping chunk as it never
ate human flesh and was back at Stone’s side as they darted across the encampment. The distance to the jeep, which hadn’t
seemed that far when he was tied up, suddenly seemed like the fucking Sahara Desert as they tore across it, trying to beat
the slowly rising crowd of charging cro-mags. The albino brothers realized something was wrong now and came out of their stuffed
semislumber as they heard the screams of their underlings.

“He’s free, kill him!” Top screamed as he raised up an inch or two from his wheelbarrow. But the effort, particularly since
he had just ingested about forty pounds of flesh, was tremendous, and he sank back down into the wheelbarrow with a loud
thwack
so that the four men who were under and. behind the barrow felt their backbones nearly crack under the weight as they tried
desperately to hold the thing up.

But even as the foul subhumans came loping from every goddamned place now, Stone and the dog just headed on in a straight
line for the jeep. Another hairy fellow jumped from a tree and Stone caught him in the head with his elbow. The man grabbed
his forehead, which had cracked like an egg, and fell backward right into the arms of another of his apelike breed. The pit
bull took out a foot, then a knee, then a face in the half light.

At last Stone saw the jeep just ahead, with no one blocking the way. He made a lunging leap and took out half the bones of
his chest as he didn’t quite make it up onto the side but slammed right into it. Gasping for breath, he pulled himself the
rest of the way up and ripped the tarp off the back part of the open jeep. Charise had been right. The brothers, after examining
the thing for food and not finding much, just covered it and left it. Where Charise and her family had gotten a U.S. Army
issue .50-cal. machine gun mounted on the back was something he would have to ask her about later, if there was a later.