Is This The End?

by Craig Sargent

  “That’s entirely right,” the Dwarf replied, his own face shriveling up like a raisin too long in the sun. “We shall rule with pain because pain is what humanity understands. You’ve been out there, Stone. They’re a bunch of worms, ready to be pushed over by the first two-bit warlord who comes along. We shall unite the land again under our rule. There will be order. All shall be quite peaceful, I assure you. Oh, some will have to die for various reasons, but most will live. And we shall ensure a restructuring of America—a better one. Then the Game shall be won. And we shall see just who has won and who’s been left behind.” He poked his stump at one of his handmaidens for another squirming bit of foulness from the table, which he gobbled down so lustily that little moving legs fell from the corner of his mouth down to the satin and velveted fabrics that lay beneath him.

  “What game is that, Dwarf?” Stone asked, lying far-back in his seat. Even the scent of the “meal” was sickening to him now. Forget where Jimmy Hoffa had disappeared. He was here on this table in the meatballs, Stone had no doubts about that.

  “The Game we play down here in our little world. The Game of Go. You’ve heard of it, no doubt, a Japanese board game. But we’ve added our own variations. We have immense electronic boards that show each of us just where and what our holdings are around America. All is entered on computer. What each man’s power, his holdings, armies, assassins—whatever—is worth. We have worked out an elaborate set of equations for the whole thing. It is all beyond your ability to fully fathom, I assure you. There are many levels of the Game—from operations in the badlands—drugs, slaves, whores—to our own internal game that we play on a hundred foot board here, using sets of rules that make chess look like bingo. This is because we play, Martin Stone, with the very world.”

  Stone was silent. He knew somehow the man wasn’t bullshitting. He meant those words. The very world.

  This crew, with the weaponry and troops at their disposal, really did stand a chance of taking it all over. If not all, then tremendous amounts anyway. Who was going to oppose them? He hadn’t seen a single force out there that even came close to matching just what he’d seen since he’d been below ground.

  “And you, Stone, are part of our game. Oh yes, you certainly are, you—and—” He looked up, stopping for a second, staring into the Plexiglas cage. The man inside, though he was undoubtedly still alive as the ants couldn’t have penetrated to his inner organs this fast, had fallen to the bottom of the cage and was no longer moving. Stone could see even from where he sat tied up that the ants were already starting to work on the eyes and were crawling into the ears. They must have preferred those parts, for they were battling violently over them, slashing at each other. The Dwarf squealed again with delight.

  “I did so want to time everything perfectly. And now the best part of the evening, the reason in fact why we are gathered together to celebrate,” he cackled, and now he was going full speed, his face a mass of twitches, his stumps waving wildly in front of him like they were searching for the missing ends. “To celebrate my engagement and my betrothal. To—your sister, Stone. And isn’t she a beautiful bride-to-be.” The Dwarf waved his arms at a greenshirt who was standing behind them and a second Plexiglas square was lowered from the ceiling. The thing came down and stopped about a yard to the right of the now completely ant-covered man whose outer layer of flesh was missing so that the muscle and gristle and everything that’s usually hidden underneath could be seen oozing as the ants dug ever deeper with gusto.

  The cover was ripped from the second box and Stone’s eyes widened in complete madness. April was inside wearing an obscene bridal gown made of white satin. Only her breasts were poking through holes that had been cut into it, and other parts were exposed as well. It was like a porno queen’s idea of a wedding dress. She was in a trance, her eyes open but staring unfocused and straight ahead, her breathing slow and deliberate. They had drugged her out of her fucking mind. She hung there spinning slowly before him and Stone felt his mind starting to go.

  “She’s such a beautiful bride, isn’t she?” the Dwarf said almost tenderly.

  “To the Dwarf,” the face fallen man across the table suddenly yelled out as they all looked on for a moment out of their drugged revelries. “May this bitch bring him many worthy man children. And may every one of them be as ugly as he is.” He raised his glass high and the others joined.

  “Come Stone, drink, for you are to have a place of honor at the ceremony.” The Dwarf raised his stumps and poured the drink down, half of it spilling down his chin and chest.

  “You bastard, you fucking slime-coated bastard,” Stone screamed. And then he was screaming nonstop at the egg man and all his pals and writhing around in the metal chair like a madman in a straitjacket. And they were all laughing and pointing at the Dwarf who raised his glass high as if to signal victory. And Stone somehow knew that in this insane Game of theirs, the more he screamed the more fucking brownie points the little bastard got.

  CHAPTER

  Sixteen

  STONE screamed all the way back to his cell and then screamed some more. He cracked. Between the food, the ants, his sister and every other goddamned thing, he just let the walls go and it all came out in insane curses and threats, none of which could be carried out. Then he tucked himself into a corner of the square steel cell they had thrown him in and at last fell asleep, his body shaking even in dreams from the aftereffects of the electric treatment. When he awoke at God knew what hour of the night, he tried to lift his snoring head from his chest where he had passed out. He felt like shit, with drool coming out of his mouth and a terrible smell in the room. He remembered last night and suddenly a flood of rage went tearing through his chest. But even as his heart speeded up from the charge of adrenaline he heard a sound, a bark in the grayness of the room and turned with a sudden surging hope in his heart.

  It was Excaliber. The dog had been nosing around the far corner of the twenty foot square they were in. The animal came flying down the steel floor when it saw that Stone was awake but slightly misjudged its trajectory as it came hydroplaning in and slid right past him, slamming into the metal wall about five feet behind Stone. Same old mutt, fearless but not quite getting his angles right. It was incredible—the bastards had actually fixed him up. The dog seemed good as new.

  “Good dog, I thought you were finito, for Christ’s sake. What the hell have you been up to? Your wound, let me see it.” Stone got down on one tired knee and pushed the animal’s fur aside around the chest area. The wound looked much better now, the stitching had been replaced with tight catgut stitches. Already it looked like the dog’s hide was growing together in places. Excaliber barked hard and licked Stone with a great swipe across the face and then another fast. Stone smiled for the first time in days. With the dog by his side, somehow, he inexplicably felt like he had a chance in all this.

  “Amazing, isn’t it,” a voice said from behind him and Stone turned around. Dr. Kerhausen’s face was peering through a small opening in the door. “What a few stitches here and there will do. His aorta had been cut slightly you know. Whoever did the original stitching did a good job, but not quite good enough. There was blockage in the passageway that was allowing only about a tenth of normal blood supply to get through. So the canine went into an unconscious hibernation. A typical reaction, actually, for many creatures that aren’t getting enough blood flow.”

  “Well, I thank you for helping my dog,” Stone said, holding onto the animal’s neck like he didn’t want to let go of it again. “But you’re still a fucking butcher.”

  “Oh please, such an old-fashioned word. I am a scientist. All that I do is for and in the name of science. All. And in that regard I’m going to need a few samples of you and your dog’s tissue and blood,” the doctor said, pressing a button in the outer wall. “But I’m sure both of you would put up a most ferocious fight if I tried to bring you out—we’ll just use a little of this NX7 gas here—and presto.” There was a hissing sound and S
tone got the whiff of something sour and very chemical smelling. And almost the instant he smelled it he was falling into blackness.

  When he awoke, his head was splitting. This time he was strapped down to a medical chair, his head and arms, everything firmly locked in place. He could see Excaliber as well out of the corner of one eye, and another figure under a sheet on the other side of him, this one stretched out on an operating table.

  “Ah, I see you’re awake,” Kerhausen said with a grim, tight smile. “Not to worry. I’m not going to be cutting you up or anything like that—today. Just taking some samples so I’ll be prepared when I do get to you. I’m sure the Dwarf will let me have what’s left of you after the Games—and the dog too. I have such an ambitious idea for you both. I’m quite excited about it.” He reached down and took a scalpel and cut into Stone’s arm before he could even move it, not that he could jerk the thing more than a half inch in any direction.

  “There, just a little blood and tissue sample,” he said, taking the surgical blade and slicing out a little half inch patch of skin right off the arm. Stone gritted his teeth hard, but he wasn’t going to give this bastard the satisfaction of showing him any pain. He knew they got their kicks out of it, all of them.

  “There, not so bad, was it?” He patted Stone on the shoulder and then walked over and did the same to Excaliber, who put up much more of a response than Stone had and wriggled furiously, twisting his head wildly at the air as his jaws were muzzled.

  “There we go, all done,” Kerhausen said cheerfully as he took both samples and put them in frozen storage, into a bin from which steam rose. “Liquid nitrogen,” he said from across the room. “Will keep it perfectly preserved until I get a chance to cross-culture it and do all the other boring things that go into every surgical experiment. In fact you might be wondering just what I have in mind, Mr. Stone. I’ll show you.” He ripped the sheet back on the figure to the side of Stone. There were two figures, a man and a woman, both of them conscious, apparently, as their eyes were open—both were totally immobilized. Some kind of muscle relaxant must have been pumped into them because they weren’t moving an inch. Both were all primed up for operations, with lines drawn over their bodies in bright red ink.

  “You see before you the man/woman transplant. I’m going to put all the woman’s parts into the man. Create a new being, something that has never existed before. And then, Stone, it will be you—and your dog’s turn. For I shall implant parts of him onto you. My boldest project yet. The first animal/human transplant. They’re freaks here, Mr. Stone. And they want only other freaks around them. And soon, soon you shall be the biggest freak of all. Half man and half dog. Oh, I can’t guarantee that you’ll live very long. But while you do, it will be a most historic and interesting occasion, I’m sure.”

  Keeping Stone all tied up with no place to go, so that he had to watch every revolting bit of it, Kerhausen had his whole operating team assemble around the two figures next to him lying on the wide table. They were both hooked up to all sorts of support systems, breathing, life monitoring, anesthetic tubes. And then the operation. It wasn’t pretty. Whole breasts sliced right off like they were the sides of a turkey at Thanksgiving dinner. And then sewn onto the chest of the man. Then all of the women’s other sexual characteristics were transferred. Breasts, hips, and even her sexual organs were cut out and sewn into a space made in the man alongside his own sexual apparatus. Everything was squeezed in tight. It was insane. It was impossible. But it was happening right before Martin Stone’s wincing eyes. The first man-made hermaphrodite. And what a bloody mess it was.

  CHAPTER

  Seventeen

  WHEN Stone awoke he came punching and kicking right out of his dreams, where he was smiting the bastards left and right. But when his eyes opened with a start to his own frantic failings, Stone saw that he was back in his metal-walled cell and wasn’t smiting anyone. He heard a sound from a corner of the room and was startled for a moment until he remembered that Excaliber was back among the living. And looking his usual early morning hungry as shit and pissed off as hell.

  “Dog,” Stone said in a whisper, as the mere sight of the animal made him feel a strange kind of secret joy. He had been so sure the pit bull wasn’t going to make it that now he had to admit that he really did care for the little fucker. As wild as the dog was, he was more loyal, and intelligent as well, than most of the homo sapiens Stone had been bumping into. Pitiful comment on the human race—but true nonetheless.

  “Come here you little shitkicker.” Stone grinned and the animal came bounding across the floor with unbridled energy. It hit Stone square on the shoulder as it jumped up with a little too much enthusiasm. Stone went flying over backwards with the dog’s stinking paws all over his face and chest.

  “Jesus, animal!” Stone shouted, pushing the dog off of him and rolling to the side. “You make feeling sentimental a combat action.” The dog came charging forward again, tongue hanging out like it was scraping the concrete floor for insects. Stone stood up fast. Excaliber wasn’t a dog you could pet sitting down. Suddenly there was a sound from one of the seamless walls and a door slid open. Two greenshirt guards walked in and stood side by side with nasty looking pump 12-gauge Brownings trained on Stone and the dog. Excaliber started to growl, as he never had liked the sight of anything metal pointed at his face.

  “Easy dog, just take it fucking easy,” Stone motioned the animal, and it slinked off back to its corner again where it sat down and kept two pissed-off looking eyes pasted on the guards.

  “Stand back,” one of the greenshirts said, motioning Stone to move. “Feeding time.” Suddenly right between them a small misshapen woman walked in carrying a large box on a strap over one shoulder. It was clearly heavy and she stumbled into the room nearly tripping. Stone started forward to help her but the guards lowered their death-dealers with sudden movement. Stone just looked at them with disgust and helped the dwarf woman take the box from her shoulder and put it down. She looked Stone right in the eyes with a puzzled expression. She was old and very ugly, like her face had been cut up for a dissection class and rearranged several times; her body too. Yet somehow within her pain-filled eyes Stone saw thanks. He smiled at her.

  “Food,” she said, kneeling down and opening the metal box. “For you and the dog.” At the word “food” and the sudden scents wafting out of the box Excaliber was up in a flash and toward the chow case. Stone had to grab him to keep him from knocking over the woman. When it came to food, nothing dared stand in the way of the animal and its culinary destination, be they cripples, old women, or both.

  “Slow down, dog,” Stone shouted, grabbing it by the ears and pulling it backwards. “All things comes to those who wait.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said, looking up at Stone with some surprise. Apparently she wasn’t used to too many folks extending even the slightest courtesy to her. Stone could see that when the guards, yelled out for the old hag to hurry up, as they had other mouths to feed. She opened the box and took out two large steaming bowls filled with stew and placed them down. Then a gallon jug of water, and some fruit.

  “The Dwarf said to feed them well,” she said, looking around at the guards who seemed to be a little bit suspicious of such good eats as the other prisoners didn’t get nearly so much. She winked at Stone, pushing the things forward. “Meals are twice a day. Does your dog have any special requirements?” she asked. She looked around again at the guards, this time sneering at them, so her teeth showed, and Stone saw that there was quite a nasty creature dwelling inside that wretched body who would strike back when pushed to the limit. “Dwarf said to feed the dog too,” she spat at them. “They have to be strong for the Games.” The two guards grumbled.

  “Well just hurry up, ugly dwarf bitch,” one said. “We haven’t got all day.” She handed Stone the water jug and then closed the box and put the strap back over her right shoulder. Stone helped her get the weight up; once she was moving forward it didn’t seem too
bad. Again she gave him a look of silent thanks and then she and the guards were gone, and the door slid noiselessly closed so Stone was sealed in again as if into his own coffin.

  The pit bull was slobbering up a storm around the bowl like there was no tomorrow. Splattered food reached as far across as the far wall and Stone had to retreat to one corner and sit on the floor. The food was good. Really good. The best chow he’d had since the Sunday nights in the bunker. That was when his mother used to cook them all kinds of good things from the frozen vaults that his father had filled with thousands of pounds of frozen meats and vegetables. Five years they had been in there and they hadn’t used it all up. But Stone had to admit, eating fresh food was far preferable. The stored food had been getting a kind of stale taste in it, like it was turning to dust, which it all was.

  Absolutely nothing happened for the next two days, other than the dwarf woman’s reappearance with food twice a day. Other than that Stone tried to keep active by running around the cell, doing jumping jacks, pushups, stretching, shadow boxing. The dog ran with him, and though there wasn’t a hell of a lot of room, the two were able to get in a decent amount of exercise. Stone knew he had to keep at the peak of his reflexes, or as close to it as he could muster. Whatever these bastards had in store for him with their Games—he wanted to be ready—for. He wasn’t too optimistic about either his chances or April’s. But the thought of the Dwarf marrying her—and her bearing his children—was so hideous and repulsive an idea to Stone, that every time he even thought of it, it made his whole stomach feel like he had just swallowed a gallon of sour milk. And he thought of it a lot.