The Damn Disciples (18 page)

That felt better. And better yet when he found his Ruger 44 and strapped the holster around his chest. Then the Beretta 9mm
autopistol. And they’d laid the silencer down right next to it—how nice. Stone screwed it on, slammed a thirty-shot mag into
the bottom of the thing, grabbing the ammo sack as well, and turned around. Now he was starting to get somewhere.

Stone headed through the darkness, toward the drug factory. There was no one out. That was one of the good things about a
cult—they obeyed orders. Guards were posted here and there, but they were mostly set on the outer edges of the town to guard
against invasion from the outside world. Somehow they hadn’t really thought too much about attack from within. For those who
went mad just fell down and began spasming, or else never got up from their beds one morning, dead in their sleep, unable
to face another day. But no pod had ever struck back against the cult. Until now.

The withdrawal was still hitting Stone hard as ever. But he had already gotten used to it in a weird way, and just used the
pain—the splitting headache—to drive himself on, the way a good boxer uses the blows he takes to wake him up and get his fighting
juices flowing. Stone’s fighting juices were sure as hell flowing. He was ready to take on the world. He moved low in the
shadows, savoring his returning memory, his abilities slowly restoring themselves. It was as if he were being reborn.

He reached the drug factory and, looking up at the sky, saw that it was just at the edge of starting to change color from
black to bruised purple. That meant dawn was coming in fast, like a fucking violet-hued freight train. And with it would come
the carriers of the plague to the surrounding territories. He had to move now.… Oil lamps were burning inside the factory
and Stone could hear the sounds of heavy work inside. The night shift. There would be at least four workers, two overseers,
a guard or two. So he was dealing with a minimum of eight, a maximum of—He didn’t know. There could be fifty fucking people
in there for all he knew. But it hardly mattered—he had to go in and take the whole fucking place out. He wasn’t going to
allow a murderous scumbag like Yasgar to take over what pitiful remnants of America were left. There would be no chance of
ever returning to some kind of real “civilization” then.

Stone took out both pistols, the big .44 and the 9mm, and walked out of the shadows and toward the front door. The guard on
duty didn’t even really take much heed of Stone when he saw him. People had been coming and going all night. But when he spotted
the two rods in the pod’s hands, the cult guard’s whole face seemed to freeze up, even through his drug haze. Pods didn’t
have guns. And in the split second it took for him to realize what that meant, it was too late. The fast lived, the slow died.
Even as he raised his rifle and reached frantically for the trigger, Stone’s silenced 9mm spoke softly. But it spat out a
burst of slugs that sliced into the man’s chest and sent him flying backward, up the ramp and then crashing through the door
that led into the Golden Nectar brewery.

There were seven men inside, the eighth was dying in a bloody pile on the floor. And they sure looked surprised to see one
Pod #47 holding two nasty-looking firearms. Stone came tearing into the room, or at least what passed for tearing, on legs
that felt as if they belonged to a ninety-year-old arthritic. Everybody was frozen—except for the stirrers atop the two steaming
drug vats. They knew they couldn’t stop—not for a second.

“Now, I don’t want to hurt no one,” Stone snarled as his eyes snapped back and forth around the room making sure no one tried
anything dumb. “Just get out of here right now, and you can all live.”

“Pod number 47, drop those guns immediately and return to your barracks,” one of the foremen screamed at Stone, standing about
ten feet away with one of the long smacking sticks in his hand.

“No chance, pal.” Stone smirked back with a certain dark satisfaction that he didn’t have to listen to these jerkoffs anymore,
didn’t have to follow their every command while his brain sat in the mud at the bottom of the ocean. The foreman, perhaps
fearing the wrath of Yasgar should he let anything get fucked up, suddenly charged forward, raising the stick over his head
as if he was going to behead Stone. But that wasn’t quite how it worked out. For even as the cult officer got within a yard
and started to bring the stick down, Stone’s 9mm burped out another stream of bullets. They sliced the guy’s whole face into
Swiss cheese, with blood running out of the holes. The stick flew from his hands as he went flying backward, as though he
had been kicked by a mule. His face red with blood that poured out onto his robe, the foreman slammed into one of the barrel
stackers and they both went sprawling.

“Now, out. I mean it—right now!” Stone screamed out, letting another few shots go up into the beamed wooden ceiling, which
sent a shower of dust and sawdust down over them all. But the two jerking dying things on the floor appeared to be enough
even for the brain-cleansed. And they walked backward out of the building, their arms held high, their zombie faces showing
traces of human tenor. The stirrers kept going, though, torn between leaving and their posts—since they knew they were dead
men if they budged.

“Down—and out,” Stone shouted again, letting a stream of bullets dance across the sides of both vats.

“But it will all go up in flames,” one of them protested.

“That’s the general idea,” Stone yelled back. “Now, down! I’m losing patience.” He released another few rounds, even closer
to them. The sound of bullets whistling by their skulls made the two let the paddles go and come tearing down the stairs.
Stone kept his eyes firmly on them as they headed out the door; then he bolted it behind them. Now he was alone. Just him,
two corpses, and thousands of gallons of mindfuck juice. Well, they were all about to have a nice little party.

Stone slammed both pistols back into their holsters and rushed over to the controls in front of the gas jets. He turned both
burners all the way up so their flames were a good five feet high and began reaching up around the sides of the vats. Then
Stone turned the valves that released the precious poison by turning a huge tap on one side. The stuff poured down onto the
floor, quickly inundating the jerking dead men, as if they were taking a final bath before an extended stay in hell. Stone
rushed to the back of the place, where the rows of filled barrels stood waiting to head out into the world. Only, he wasn’t
going to give them the chance. He ran up and down the rows opening the spigots on the sides of the barrels. Their contents
began pouring out onto the floor like a party of drunks who couldn’t hold their liquor.

Suddenly he heard a crackling sound behind him and turned. The stuff had caught on fire over near the vats. The drug liquid
that had poured out on the floor was a flaming sheet and reaching up toward the main vats. Stone knew what would happen when
full contact occurred. Party was over. Time for the fat lady to sing. He tore ass down the center of the place, stumbling
and almost going over like some Bowery drunk. The withdrawal was doing wonders for his whole balance system. But fire is a
strong motivator. And already the entire side of the floor holding the vats was ablaze in a carpet of reaching yellow and
red. Stone ran straight for the door, nearly slipping as he hurdled the two corpses on the floor, their blood spreading out
for yards in each direction, mixing with the Golden Nectar, which nearly covered the entire wooden floor.

Stone could feel the flames reaching for him, singeing the hair on his head, making the whole left side of his body feel as
if it was about a thousand degrees hotter than the right side. He reached the door, threw the bolt, and ripped the thing open.
Stone knew there would be trouble waiting out-side. But he’d worry about that in a second. The fire was burning his tail right
now. He came tearing out of the place like a racehorse at the Kentucky Derby. And bowled right through about ten pods who
were standing in front with sticks in their hands, apparently trying to get up the nerve to make a charge. Only, Stone came
flying through them so fast they didn’t have a chance to strike at him. By the time they turned and started toward Pod #47,
who was still tearing ass away from the building, it was too late.

There was a sudden roaring sound from within the Nectar factory. And they could all see that the fire had grown a thousandfold.
For the orange glow was streaming through every crack in the place, through the open door, through air vents in the roof.
But that only lasted for an instant. Then came the explosion. It was an oddly peaceful explosion—in a way. Less sound than
one might think—but incredible fury. For as the entire load of highly inflammable Nectar caught and released its great stored-up
energy all at once, the burning blast rushed out in all directions. The log building that housed the factory had been well
made, securely constructed. Strong enough to withstand the howling winds of winter. But not an explosion in its very guts.

Even as Stone continued to tear butt, getting to about sixty yards away, he heard the sound behind him. It was like being
inside a thundercloud when it released its heavenly lion’s roar. And then he didn’t know what the hell was going on except
that the whole world was bright yellow and he was being lifted and tossed around like a leaf with a firecracker tied to its
tail. He literally flew right through the smoking air a good twenty feet up, and he suddenly knew how it felt to be a meteor
entering the earth’s atmosphere. Then he hit—and hard. Only his years of training and his still-youthful agility allowed him
to come down without breaking anything. Though it hurt like hell.

The heat wave followed the blast itself, and he felt a rush of fifty-mile-per-hour superheated wind rush right over his back
as if he was lying in front of a blast furnace. Then there was terrible screaming. And when he lifted his head after a few
seconds and dizzily focused on the scene behind him, he saw why. The pods who had been waiting to ambush him were all human
torches now. Every part of them burning as if they were trying to light up the heavens all the way to Alpha Centauri. Behind
them the entire drug factory was ablaze in a solid wall of flame. Nothing could be seen but fire, already twisted beyond recognition
from what it had been just seconds before. The flaming pods ran wildly in all directions, like moths caught in a campfire.
Then they collapsed onto the ground, where they joined in the blaze.

Stone watched the conflagration for a few seconds. He didn’t feel good about seeing men die like that. But he did feel a deep
satisfaction that, whatever happened now, he had put the expansion plans of the Guru—maybe even the existence of the cult
itself—in big doubt. That was pretty good for a man who could hardly walk and felt as if he had a hangover from a thousand-year
drinking bout. But his feelings of self-congratulations didn’t last long. For as Stone sat up, he heard sounds behind him
from out of the flame-splattered darkness. And as three figures came into view, Stone knew he’d just gone from the fire into
something much worse. For coming at him with vengeance in their respective eyes were Guru Yasgar, seated atop a raging tusked
elephant, and Excaliber, the fucking traitor, who ran alongside the rampaging giant as though he wanted the first piece of
the flesh pie of Martin Stone

Having an elephant, tusks and all, with huge trunk waving in the purple dawn, coming straight at him, was not something Stone
had ever experienced before. And doubtless he never would again. In fact, it didn’t look as if he was going to experience
much of anything after about the next five seconds. But even as he somehow made himself rise to both legs, which trembled
like toothpicks riddled with termites beneath him, and pulled out both pistols into his hands, the Guru screamed out orders
to the elephant and kicked it hard on both ears so the thing came to a skidding stop not ten feet from Stone. Yasgar screamed
down something in a language that wasn’t English to the dog, and it stopped as well. Stone had to admit, even in the midst
of all the blood and death, that it pissed him off to see the dog obey a command so quickly and totally when he hadn’t been
able to get it to even fetch a fucking ball on command in the months they had been traveling together. And even as he thought
it, he knew how absurd it was to be thinking about something so trivial when he was about to be squashed.

Guru Yasgar looked down at him from atop the immense beast of burden. He didn’t look too happy about it all as the light danced
over his face. Even off the drugs now, Stone had to admit it gave his heart a little bit of a turn to look up into that face.
The man exerted an almost palpable power, the presence of evil as he stood up high on the elephant silhouetted by the violet
dawn that slowly brightened the heavens behind him.

“Pod number 47—why have you done this?” the Guru asked. He seemed genuinely curious within his fury. It was something that
shouldn’t have happened, couldn’t have happened.

“The name’s Stone,” Stone replied, looking up at the man high above him. “Pod number 47 died last night while I puked my guts
out getting off this shit you addicted me to.”

“It’s impossible for any man to break free of a successful cleansing,” Yasgar said as the elephant stared hard at Stone, as
if it was praying it got the chance to squish his head like a rotten pumpkin. The dog, too, Stone saw with disgust, was giving
him the once-over, its lips pulled back, its teeth showing. It was pointing at him, lining up tail, back, and nose to make
a perfect line. Stone knew what that meant. He had only seconds.

“Well, sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Yasgar, but I did it. Don’t you think so?” Stone nodded his head toward the burning drug
factory behind him and let a smile play across his lips.

“I was going to have my elephant here, Shiva, rip your balls off, impale you on her tusks,” the Guru said, letting his own
smile flicker on the thick lips within the hooded robe. “But now…now I think that I will have your own dog kill you. Yes,
that will be a fitting punishment for such terrible deeds.” Yasgar looked down at the pit bull and again screamed out something
that sounded to Stone like Greek, but was in fact demonic Sumerian incantations that the Guru used in many of his ceremonies
taken from real scrolls, thousands of years old.