The Damn Disciples (20 page)

The cult officers, who had been enjoying some pretty good odds against Stone and the dog, suddenly seemed a lot less sure
about the mini-army of the brain-broken men. They knew who they were. They had seen them all be broken—too far—and sent out
into the wilds to die. It was all too much for them. The Guru dead…And now these ex-pods who should be dead returning with
weapons in their hands. Their entire universe was turning upside down.

Suddenly, with croaking but spirited rebel yells the Broken Ones charged in, or charged as fast as men with not everything
all there can charge. Still, it was the thought that counted. They tore into the confused cultees with their homemade weapons—branches
with nails driven through them, clubs with hand-sharpened rocks lashed down to their tops, spears made from rusted kitchen
knives. But lots of things will kill. Human flesh is terribly penetrable. Death doesn’t care how tacky is the implement used
to bring it new souls.

Stone fired his last few rounds and then used the pistols as clubs, smashing his way toward the fighting Broken Ones. With
the pit bull covering his flank, they reached them within a few seconds. Stone put his arm on Smythe’s shoulder.

“You just saved my fucking ass, pal,” Stone said through a grimacing mouth. One of the robed attackers had gotten a good slice
on his shoulder and he was just starting to feel it.

“You saved
our
asses, Stone,” Smythe said, beaming like a kid with a new toy at the fact that he’d been able to lead this squad of dead
men into battle. To be a man is the hardest thing to attain.

“You think you can handle these bastards?” Stone asked as Smythe got up from the seat so Stone could get on.

“No trouble, mister,” Smythe said with a firm look. “The hard part was getting ourselves human again. The rest is easy.”

“Thanks. I gotta check out something right away. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Smythe turned and ran across the street,
where fierce hand-to-hand was going on everywhere. Men were collapsed in struggling heaps, and bodies covered with red lay
all around. It was a nasty fight. Stone whistled and the dog flew up onto the back seat, its tail wagging for the first time
since it had been in the damn place. The seat was its security blanket, and it pressed down flat against it, clamping all
four legs around it like a bank robber around money. It was never letting go. Stone twisted the accelerator and the Harley
screamed out its power, rolling over two dead cultees that squished like blood-filled waterbeds beneath his wheels.

He tore ass down the road toward town as the fire from the Nectar factory spat out an acrid smoke that was al-ready filling
the air for hundreds of yards and heading rapidly toward the main part of town. There was pandemonium everywhere, with robed
figures running up and down the streets, voices shouting. But no one seemed to know quite what to do. The whole scene was
unorganized, already disintegrating into anarchy. Stone had nothing against most of the cultees—he had just been one himself.
But he wasn’t letting anyone try to kill him, either. So, when a few overaggressive robed figures came tearing to-ward the
be from the side of the street, Stone sprayed them with a burst from the .50-caliber on the front of the bike. Three robes
spouted blood and they spun back like tops.

The bike shot down the main street, accelerating every yard. Figures dove out of the way as the roaring cycle rocketed like
a black panther through the center of town. It took Stone only a minute to reach the palace. He remembered how it had seemed
like the very house of God to his moronic brain just a day or so before. How he had been in awe of the palace and couldn’t
even look at it when he drew near. That wasn’t quite the case now.

The four guards at the front door weren’t ready for what came at them out of the dawn—a cruiserweight Harley pouring smoke
from its pipes at the superacceleration Stone was pushing it to. They barely had time to get their weapons to half-staff before
the blurred vehicle opened up with a hailstorm of slugs. Four bodies went dancing around in a ballroom of blood before they
slipped right into the grave Stone didn’t wait around for any parting words. Holding his head down, he screamed.

“Duck, dog, duck ”!Which was simple but clear advice. The bike slammed right into the thick wooden doors. And tore them off
their rusting hinges. The Harley came barreling into the main lobby of the late Guru’s palatial retreat. There was wealth
everywhere—carpets, tapestries, huge oil paintings—all stolen from nearby museums, taken from the possessions of those whose
brains had been taken over. But Stone wasn’t on the museum tour. For another bunch of Elite Guards opened up from various
hiding places around the big marble-pillared lobby. Stone was sure April was on the second floor; that was where the harem
was rumored to be.

He saw wide, curving stairs to the left and wheeled the bike around, slowing to about thirty miles per hour. He was barely
in control, so tight was the turn. It skimmed and shimmied all around the marble floor and went right over the back of a man
who had been hiding behind a chair. His spine cracked like a chicken bone at Sunday dinner. Slugs poured out from everywhere,
like murderous hands trying to squeeze his skull. But Stone reached the bottom of the wide stone staircase and wheeled the
bike around again. The moment the front wheel hit the bottom step he turned the throttle to full and bent all the way forward.
The motorcycle shot up the stairs as if there was gold at the top as slugs whizzed all around it, unable to get a bead on
the two riders.

The ride was like going through rapids, and both Stone and the pit bull were bounced around as though they were in an earthquake.
But somehow they hung on, and within two seconds were at the second-floor landing. More guards awaited them at the far end
of the floor, and Stone headed straight toward them, figuring where there were guards there was something to guard. It was
hardly fair—to them. As they kneeled down and lifted their Nato 7.2mm assault rifles, Stone merely moved his thumb a half
an inch to the left and pressed hard. And fifteen slugs shot out of the smoking barrel mounted on the front wheel. About half
of them seemed to take a liking to the one on the left, the other the guy on the right. In any case, it hardly mattered. For
when they had finished tearing through pounds of flesh, both men were not much more than yesterday’s leftovers which any self-respecting
alleycat wouldn’t touch. They slid along the marble floor like hockey pucks and hit the back wall, where they spattered blood
all over the golden floor-to-ceiling curtains.

Stone slowed the be to a near stop at the end of the hall, turned it with one leg down, and then accelerated again, slamming
right into two oak doors, which flew back against the inside wall like drums crashing at the end of a Wagner symphony. The
bike flew inside, knocking over tables, chairs, all kinds of stuff, finally slamming into a wall, where Stone and traveling
dog went flying off the vehicle and right into the plaster surface in a most painful manner.

The smoke and dust and plaster dust had hardly cleared when Stone heard a dry high-pitched cackling sound coming from the
far side of the room. He wiped his eyes free of the dust that was floating around them and, coughing a few times, ripped his
Ruger .44 from its holster and turned to see what God had wrought.

And he could hardly believe his eyes. For just twenty feet away from him, in between the Transformer on his left and April
on the right, was the Dwarf, the hideous armless and legless criminal monstrosity who traveled in a machine-gun-equipped mobile
wheelchair. Stone had killed the wretched little egg man months before. He had thrown the bastard from a twelve-story building.
It was impossible. Stone’s face must have showed his confusion. For the Dwarf laughed louder and shook its head from side
to side like a basketball trying to come free and find a basket.

“What are the thoughts of the mindless?” he asked in his inevitable Zen Koan of death.

“Blackness,” Stone answered, slowly raising his hand in the shadows and smoke. “I should know. I’ve just been there.”

“Oh, Stone, it’s all just too funny,” the Dwarf shrieked in that high-pitched voice that Stone couldn’t stand, like a pup-pet
that had gone psycho. But it didn’t look too funny to Stone—not with his sister standing there with a look as dead as rock
on her face. And on the other side of the war wheelchair—the Transformer, with his leathery dead face and glowing red eyes
burning from within the black hood. It was quite a crew. Although Stone supposed that with the blood-coated dog by his side,
the two of them didn’t look a hell of a lot better.

“What do you want?” Stone asked, holding his gun at a slight tilt, ready to take out either of them at any moment. But there
was something up—it wasn’t as simple as it appeared. No way. Stone knew the Dwarf. He had already escaped certain death several
times. Stone’s senses, even in the midst of his drug withdrawal, were on full alert as he scanned around wildly looking for
the trap.

“You’re wondering how I survived the fall,” the Dwarf said, pushing a button with one of his stumps. The Dwarf, who resembled
nothing so much as a huge pasty-white egg with cancerous growths coming out a few inches where arms and legs should be, had
a little bit of mobility with the pointed stumps of red flesh that protruded from the shoulders. And with these it could poke
at a whole array of buttons and dials all around the side of its high-tech motorized wheelchair. “I fell into water. A swimming
pool, Stone. You should have looked.”

“Yeah, I sure should have,” Stone whispered bitterly. “What do you want, Dwarf?” he asked, wondering if he and April had just
run out of time.

“What does a man with everything want?” The Dwarf laughed in his high voice, with such shrieking tonalities that it hurt Stone’s
ears. Even the dog let out a little howl, as it heard the higher frequencies with even greater acuity—and it didn’t like what
it heard one bit.

“He wants it all,” Stone answered with a grunt.

“Exactly. Right again, aren’t you? He wants all. So there is nothing you can offer to bargain with me, foolish man. I hold
all the cards.” At the word
cards
as if on prearranged signal, the ceiling right above Stone suddenly opened up and a steel cable net came flying down, ballooning
out over both man and dog. Stone had his hands full—for coming right behind the net were eight guys who looked as if they
had been lifting cows before breakfast. But he had caveman equalizers of his own. He ripped both pistols up and fired. And
kept firing. The slugs tore through the steel netting, severing a whole section to the side of him—and taking out four of
the attackers.

As the smoke swirled all around him, Stone rolled through the bullet-created opening with the pit bull right on his heels.
They came out fighting, Stone slamming the butt of his Ruger right into a nose as the pit bull took out a kneecap in one bloody
bite and the stricken leg collapsed like a broken Tinkertoy. Stone whipped his glance across the room, but to his horror the
Dwarf was already rolling off out a door he hadn’t seen—as two hoods pulled April along. Not that was she resistant. She was
as docile as a cow being led to slaughter. Who wouldn’t be with all the quarts of junk she had floating around in her bloodstream?

Suddenly the Transformer jumped right in his path, blocking Stone from going on. From out of his robe the hands pulled long
daggers, which he twirled around fast, showing Stone what he could do.

“You die now,” the mechanical voice croaked out from within the hood. “You and your fucking dog.” He threw one of the knives
fast, and it slammed right into Excaliber’s chest before the animal could even move. Stone looked with honor as he saw the
blade go in and the dog go down. Instantly the other hand whipped out and the knife whizzed straight at Stone’s throat. Only
the fact that he had been leaning over forward to see the dog saved his life, as the throwing dagger missed his neck by an
inch and flew past, sticking into one of the Transformer’s own elite bodyguards who had been sneaking up on Stone with maces
in hand.

But even as Stone ripped his pistols up to get a sight on the Transformer, two more knives appeared in the High Priest’s hands
and they flew out. Both hit their targets—Stone’s hands. One glanced off his left hand, leaving a long gouge along the top.
The other dug right into the back of the hand and went through it. The result was just what the Transformer wanted—Stone dropped
his guns and was suddenly completely vulnerable.

He reached over with his gouged hand and ripped the blade from the other. But even as he tried to hold the knife with the
gouged hand, it slipped out. The fingers weren’t quite working right. Transformer was closing in on him fast, wanting to do
it by hand now, slashing forward into Stone’s chest and face. Stone barely jumped out of the way as the black-robed figure
moved forward with lightning speed. He knew one more charge, and —

And he was right. For the Transformer suddenly stabbed with a lunge and Stone felt the point of the blade rip right into his
chest. The bones of his ribs stopped it from slipping through to his he, but as he grimaced with pain Stone was flung backward
by the sheer force of the blow. He fell onto a rug and the whole thing slid a few yards along the floor. But it was all over.
He had nothing. No more tricks. The Transformer sprinted over and stood above him, straddling Stone with both legs. He raised
his arms up high, each hand holding one of the long daggers—like a matador about to spear a bull. Stone suddenly realized
that he was clutching the leg of a chair he had somehow grabbed as he fell. With a burst of strength from the very far reaches
of his soul, he pulled hard. The leg snapped about two feet up from the floor, and he whipped the jagged piece around and
up.

The Transformer laughed a hollow robotic laugh and came down, both knives gleaming like death’s eyes. Stone thrust up with
the chair leg—and hit something. And he continued to push and push, even as his stabbed hands screamed out for mercy. The
stake slammed beneath the robe and right up into the lower rib cage of the Transformer. In an instant it had slid up a foot
and a half, ripping through both lungs, cutting his heart in two. And as Stone madly thrust on, looking directly into the
ugly death face, the glowing red eyes, the Transformer suddenly let out with an unearthly scream. The stake pushed on, and
suddenly the attacker couldn’t scream at all. For the wooden point of the jagged chair leg emerged from his mouth coated in
red.