The Damn Disciples (8 page)

It wasn’t a clean opening; the bike shimmied and shook around as the wheels caught on pieces of flaming debris. But it was
room enough. For suddenly, with junk being thrown up behind him by the churning paddlewheels of the Harley, he was through.
The bike suddenly shot out the other side as if it was flying from a cannon, and Stone was a hundred yards down the highway
before he slowed a little and twisted his head around to see what God and his Luchaire had wrought.

It was a mess. He had not just blasted a ten-foot-wide hole through the manmade Maginot Line, but had set the whole thing
on fire as well. It burned along a hundred-foot-long stretch and the fingers of flame were moving fast. Atop the barrier,
burning men screamed and ran this way and that trapped in a world of pain. Well, the road would be opened up from now on.
That was for damn sure, Stone thought darkly. In the game of life and death, it was only
one
strike and you were out.

Stone’s heart didn’t slow down to something approaching normal for a good three hours and a hundred and fifty miles. Being
attacked by psychotic sports teams was something new even for Stone, who thought he had seen just about everything by now.
But that was far from the case, he saw as he came around a curve on the interstate and viewed a sight to freeze any man’s
eyeballs. Two immense H-bomb craters were set about a mile apart. They were gargantuan, towering up into the skies like some
sort of mythical creations; the land around them was relatively flat. They were a half-mile in diameter, and their circular
craters rose up a good thousand feet before cresting out to a twenty-foot-wide ridge and then sloping back down inside again.
Monuments that would survive long after the men who had created them were dust in the ground. Mountains to madness. Towers
marking the fatal flaw of man—his genius at creating death.

Stone eased down on the throttle. The craters stood on each side of the interstate, their very lower edges almost touching
the side of the road, coming to within yards. Stone wasn’t sure just how close he wanted to allow himself to get to these
atomic anthills. He had no way of knowing how radioactive they were or weren’t. But as he drew closer to the twin craters,
Stone’s nervousness about proceeding increased with every yard the bike rolled forward. Both craters, he could see now as
the sun was falling from the sky and bluish darkness was setting in above, were glowing. One was a bluish color, the other
green, as if they had been hit by different types of bombs or radiation. Stone’s eyes grew wide as he turtled on ahead, for
the craters were different in another way as well. The right-hand crater was dead, black as the dark side of the moon, pockmarked
and covered with a volcanic ash. But the other was…alive…or something. It was the “or something” that Stone didn’t like. For
every second that he drew closer, he could see what looked like numerous wriggling and slithering things nearly covering the
whole slope of the skyscraping crater.

He stopped the bike and took out his field binoculars from a box behind him as Excaliber snorted nervously on the seat. The
pit bull kept sniffing at the wind, taking deep breaths and then making a strange expression. Something was up. God knew what
it was. Once Stone got the crater, only about a quarter-mile off, in focus, he felt like vomiting. For the undulating worms
that covered the whole side of the bomb crater were like nothing he had seen in his life. And he wished he hadn’t seen these.
They didn’t look like they belonged on this earth. They ranged from two to five feet long, about a foot in diameter, and were
covered with spikes and quills and all kinds of ugly stabbing things. Stone didn’t know if they were animal, vegetable, or
a combination of both. The tubular things seemed more or less anchored to the ground. But they sure as hell could bend all
over the place, reaching out with long grasping snouts that appeared—though he couldn’t see clearly in the twilight—to have
rows of teeth that hooked backward like sharks’. They kept vacuuming down along the ground around them all over the crater.
Stone could barely see some little creatures moving down below along the slope, though what in God’s name could be up there
he didn’t think he wanted to meet either.

Suddenly one of the tubes that he happened to be focused on caught something and lifted it up, holding its prey in its spiked
snout. Just before it chewed down hard, Stone got a good look at its catch. It looked something like a frog, a frog that was
bloodred and had two reptilian heads and long hooked claws instead of webbed feet, and numerous other revolting features.
But even as Stone watched, the thing exploded into blood and mush as the tubular plant thing bit down. It swallowed down the
twitching creature, all five pounds of it, in two quick bites. Stone could see the shape of the minimonster wriggling within
even as it slid down the tubular stem and into the digestive fluids at the base of the thing.

Carnivorous plants. Stone had read about them. Even seen pictures of them in books. But none of them had looked like these.
There had never been anything like these before, he was sure of that. Doubtless a scientist would have been ecstatic to witness
the disgusting scene. And would have won the Nobel Prize, if there were such things anymore. But Stone was just disgusted,
nauseated to the core of his soul. They were alien. Not meant for life here.

Stone had no choice. It was either go down the interstate, which slid right between the two giants, or waste many hours going
all the way around the wastelands behind them. And for all he knew, it could be worse out there.

“Okay, dog, pull down your radioactive-proof eye flaps or whatever the hell you’ve got, ’cause we’re going through some hot
roadway.” Stone wrapped a scarf around his mouth and zippered up the black motorcycle jacket he had taken from the bunker.
He eased the bike down the road—and saw with growing honor that the living crater was absolutely covered with the tubular
worm things. And every ugly one of them was turning toward Stone and the bike like little radar domes, searching out just
what the intruder was—and whether it was edible.

They were even uglier up close. Much, much uglier. For they were the color of blood, with veins running all over them, extending
right down into the glowing black soil. They were rooted into the very radioactive crust of the crater. Yet somehow it had
given them life, nurtured them, made them grow with wild abandon. They were constantly moving, twisting, reaching around with
their damned eyeless, overtoothed tubes snapping out at anything that came close—sometimes each other. Then snapping their
jaws shut with reflexive action and biting and chewing at whatever was there.

And he saw even more little things as he came right between the two craters. Other little mutant creatures rushing between
the roots of the meateaters. They looked as nasty as the tubes—armored, covered with scales, horns, and bands of orange and
red color that told all the world they were poisonous as shit to bite into. The whole fucking slope was alive with the ugly,
the diseased, the mutated. Stone prayed with all he had inside that this wasn’t where the new world was heading. That it wasn’t
him and his kind that were obsolete. That this one mountain was an aberration, a fluke that would die out and would never
be repeated elsewhere.

But if it was dying out, it sure as hell seemed healthy enough around here. The tubes, some of them ten, even twelve feet
long, snapped out at the bike, which passed just inches from their reach. One of them stretched out and almost nicked Stone.
Excaliber’s jaws flew up in a snap, and with a single bite he severed the head of the thing, churning jaws and all, and spat
it out leaving the headless tube jerking around in the dust. They had almost gotten clear of the reaching jungle of teeth
when Stone heard a roar off to the side. The sound was something between what a lion might emit on a horny jungle night and
the trumpet a rogue elephant makes telling all the world to watch out.

Then Stone saw it, and he knew why the beast was so arrogant. It was the mutant to end mutants. The creature stood ahead of
them in the road, directly in their way. Stone’s jaw hung on in amazement as he stared at the thing. It was big. At least
three or four times as big as Excaliber, 300 to 350 pounds. But it was its appearance that was mind-boggling. If Dr. Frankenstein
took a warthog, a mastiff, and a mountain lion and got about equal portions of each cut off, then sewed them all together
without looking too closely or worrying much about where he placed the tails or the mane or stuff like that, then he might
have come up with something like the animal that roared in the highway dead ahead and exhibited jaws that would make Godzilla
get dentures.

If it thought it could stand up to an overloaded Harley going fifty miles per hour, then let it try. Stone shot ahead, aiming
right at the thing. He gave it a long burst from the .50 caliber up front. But even as the slugs flew, the creature sprang
to the side with the lightning speed of a cheetah. Stone breathed a sigh of relief as he shot past. Which was replaced by
a gasp of horror within a split second as he heard the thing growl as they shot past—and then heard the damn dog behind him
return the challenge. Stone felt the seat spring up, and he knew that the crazy Rambo of a dog had jumped into the fucking
fray.

By the time he screeched the bike to a halt, he had gone another thirty feet. He slammed his booted foot out on the ground
and swung the whole bike right around him. The match was already a blur of fur and howls and foam. Stone couldn’t see what
the hell was going on. He pulled up to within about ten feet and sat on the bike, his finger on the trigger, praying for a
clean shot.

Suddenly the air cleared for an instant and Stone saw them both clearly, about five feet apart, looking at one another as
if they wanted nothing more in this life than to tear the other one’s face into noodles. And though Excaliber had taken on
bears, lions, whole packs of dogs—and if he didn’t always win, was at least able to walk away—at last it looked as if he had
met his match. For the pit bull was already gored along one flank by the mutation’s huge tusks, twelve inches long and standing
on each side of its ugly face ready to gore again. And Stone could see as well that, though the dog had ripped its formidable
teeth into the thing’s throat area, it had no throat. The pit bull had ripped up some dark black neck fur but hadn’t penetrated
anything. There was nowhere on the damn thing to penetrate, as far as Stone could see.

Both animals reared back to have a second go at it. Stone didn’t have time to be chivalrous—or fair. Whatever the hell that
meant. He got the atomically created thing in the sights of the .50-caliber and let loose with a stream of slugs that sliced
into the mutant’s stomach and chest. Even that seemed to hardly be enough. The thing lurched backward, snarling and creating
quite a fuss as Excaliber stood back, his hair bristling and his jaws wide apart, snarling as he watched the mad dance of
agony. But even the most armored of Mother Nature’s monsters can’t take a whole gutful of .50-calibers. And suddenly everything
just exploded out of it and the animal collapsed in a bloody pile, its head jerking violently as its tusks dug into the road
as if digging out a grave.

“Get up, you asshole,” Stone snapped angrily as he pulled the bike alongside the dog. The pit bull glared up at him with its
own anger as if to say, “You should have let me take the bastard on. I was just about to kick his ass. Didn’t feel a thing,
didn’t feel a thing.”

“Right,” Stone snarled back as he looked at the dog’s side. The tusk had gored about twelve inches along it. Not too deep,
though, the pit bull was made of pretty hard materials himself. Stone released the throttle and the bike squealed around,
the dog almost falling off as it clamped down hard with its legs. He drove hard, not looking back at the mountain of ugliness.
He made a mental note not to come this way again.

It didn’t take long for the warthog thing to die. Not that it couldn’t have survived a few days falling to pieces if left
on its own. But it wasn’t left alone. Within minutes, the tubes with teeth were snaking down around the bottom of the crater
where the still-twitching thing lay. Ordinarily its hide was too thick for the tubes to penetrate. But now it was shattered
in places, blood spurting out in pulses as the heart beat on. The first of the tubes reached down under the thing, up into
its still-living stomach, and clamped its rows of teeth around something. It pulled hard. The dying mutation let out a howl
that even Stone and the dog heard, now two miles off. Then the rest of the snapping mouths closed in. And there were no more
screams. Just the slurping sounds of dozens of the tubeteeth feeding, filling their underground stomachs with pools, reservoirs
of blood, for when times got hard. When there was no blood to be had for love or money.

After the attack of the killer hog and the blood-drinking radioactive hoses with shark’s teeth, the rest of the trip south
to La Junta was relatively uneventful. Other than the road being nothing more than a series of holes for miles—which the wide-wheeled
Harley didn’t have all that much trouble with—Stone made good time. He was about ten miles from his destination when he decided
to get off the interstate. He didn’t necessarily want to announce his intentions until he knew just what the hell was going
on. Riding in armed to the teeth was not the smartest way to find April—alive. He’d tried that route before. And nearly gotten
his head blown off.

Stone headed down a one-laner that quickly changed from cracked asphalt to hard-packed dirt with rutted tire marks in some
places. Just the kind of road he liked. The village traffic wasn’t too likely to come by here. He had gone about two miles
when he suddenly felt the skin crawl along the nape of his neck. Something was wrong. There were people near, very near. It
was his intuition, the gift of the “Nadi,” as the Indians who had saved his life when he had first left the bunker and nearly
been killed had called him. And Stone’s mental Distant Early Warning system was beeping full blast. There were trees draping
overhead all around them now. Vulnerable from the woods on each side—and the fucking air. “Great!” Stone spat out as he eased
the Harley forward. If there was trouble, he had just allowed himself to ride right into a perfect ambush situation without
even really realizing where he was going. Suddenly he saw faces just off the road ahead, about twenty feet inside the woods.
About a dozen of them, all lurking around in the half-darkness, their faces fixed on him like cats’ eyes in the night. Then—movement
above him in the branches. His predictions of sky attack appeared about to become reality. More of the eyes, and the same
sunken-looking faces, with scrawny arms hanging on around the branches as they peered down. And even as Stone reached for
the 12-gauge and tensed his shoulders expecting one of the men to drop on him, he realized that no one was moving. No attack,
no ambush was taking place, none whatsoever. For all the faces just kept looking at him with a blankness that Stone found
quite unsettling.