Stone walked around sampling the various wares, sniffing carefully at the pots of bubbling food, checking whether the stuff was poisoned. He figured if it didn’t smell rancid and had been cooking hard for an hour or two, it couldn’t kill him. So he sampled nearly half a dozen of the strange delicacies.
It was going to be a scorcher, he could see that already. Men had stripped down to their waists as the noon sun beat down like a heat lamp in a sauna. Stone took off his fatigue jacket and tied the arms around his shoulders, pulling his T-shirt out, trying to ventilate himself a little better. Then he saw them, the Strathers brothers, just at the midway point of Main Street. A long table had been set up for them, and the three brothers, along with a dozen of their top henchmen, sat there smoking cigars, drinking, and looking altogether like the well-to-do murderers, thieves, and warlords they were. The area around them, for about fifty yards in each direction, had been cleared of all the normal clods and morons from the mountains. The reserved area was just for the crime bosses. It was the VIP lounge of the bloodletting set.
Stone walked up to some of the nasty-faced guards who stood along one side, holding the crowds at bay. The ganger started to raise his shotgun as Stone walked up but turned and caught a nod from Vorstel at the table. He let Stone go by, looking at him like he would just as soon mow him down.
“Howdy, Preacher Boy,” Vorstel said, rising up as Stone came over. “Please, please take a place at the table here.” He pointed to the right, indicating that Stone should sit at the end where the brothers sat, which was clearly an honor. They were going for his Preacher Boy creation, Stone could see—hook, line, and sinker.
“Oh, Preacher, you really should have shaved,” Jayson said, looking even more effeminate than when Stone had seen him the previous day. The thin, greased-hair brother was wearing a purple smoking jacket that hung down over his shoulders like a Liberace costume and, around his neck, an ascot with red and pink dots. He looked bizarre, not that all the other frog-faced slime were any beauties. “You know, we all do try to turn out our best on the Fourth. Man needs some traditions, you know.” Jayson arched his neck and stared at Stone like a feline.
“Yes, yes, sorry about that,” Stone said, sitting down to the right of Vorstel. “Been traveling so much, doing so much killing, haven’t had the time to shave a lot of the time. Get out of the habit. You know how it is.”
“Ah, let him alone,” Rudolf snarled. His bulldoglike head had a wide-brimmed gangster-type hat atop it. “I didn’t fucking shave, neither.”
“Yes, but you’ve got no face, dear brother,” Jayson said, batting his eyelashes, which Stone noticed were fake and quite long. “So no one can even tell.” He laughed sharply, and the entire table looked at the ninety-five-pound amphetamine-and cocaine-addicted transvestite like he should have been thrown in a garbage pit.
A beat-up whore dressed in something resembling both a Roman toga and a Betsy Ross getup, only with her breasts sticking out of two holes that had been cut in her “Colonial” costume, came over to Stone and handed him two bottles, the green and brown stuff again. Stone thanked her and put the foul brew down on the table, hoping no one would notice. Suddenly there was a roar of engines to the east, and every eye turned that way as the crowd a few blocks up parted, screaming and jumping out of the way for their very lives.
The Head Stompers were coming in like the forward batallions of Attila the Hun. Three dozen motorcycles in a phalanx formation, modeled after the Roman legions. They rode atop their bikes, standing on the seats, steering the things with strips of leather, which they wrapped around the handlebars on each side and then around their hands. They could drive the things like trick-riding cowboys in a rodeo. As they got to within a few blocks, Bronson, who was at the lead point of the phalanx, whipped the chain from his shoulder and spun it around his head like a propeller blade. With the long scythe on the end, the whistling weapon created a shimmering circle of silver in the air. The biker leader looked like an apparition, an envoy from hell, towering above the seat, his bald, tattoed head gleaming, his huge, muscled body like something carved out of titanium.
Stone could see the Struthers clan all around him start to go for their weapons as the bikers approached to within a block, letting go with piercing war screams as they surged forward in a stampede of thundering machines, with oily, black smoke rising up behind them. But at the last second Bronson stopped his bike on a dime, whipped the chain back in so the links wrapped back up around his shoulder, and jumped off the motorcycle, all in the space of about two seconds. Stone gulped hard. The man was tough. The rest of the biker crew came to a halt in even rows behind him, all in near perfect formation. Then they, too, jumped down, snapped down their kickstands, and headed over to the table as the street from the Struthers, where they sat and glared over.
“Happy Fourth of July to you, Mr. Muscles,” Jayson screamed out in a piercing falsetto.
“And fuck you, too, scum,” Bronson screamed back, slamming his fist down on the table, and a whole squad of whores came running with brew and drugs. Stone was impressed with the level of conversation around here—this was a bunch that could really make you think.
But the men didn’t waste words, they went at it—partying, that is. And after an hour or so, as the drunken orgies began, as the whore-fucking contests went on, with women tied down on long tables with men pumping away at them, as all manner of perverted and deranged Fourth of July contests were carried out, Stone could see that these guys really knew how to celebrate. And when both sides of the street had drunk enough to sink a battleship, the main contests began.
The shooting contests were the one chance the two competing gangs got all year to have a go at one another without slitting each other’s throats. It was a way of relieving tensions, getting things out, a competition to see who was best—for that year, anyway. Any man from either gang was eligible to compete—if he had the balls. After all the elimination rounds there would be one winner, who would receive a trophy with a pistol on top of it. It was an old beat up thing, gold-plated at best, with the .38-caliber casting of a pistol atop it cracked in five places. Yet every man there coveted the broken NRA trophy and would have given anything for it, for in this little fucked-up portion of the world, anyway, it was the symbol of the highest achievement and respect.
At one side the crowd was pushed back by the guards, and Stone saw three platforms being wheeled in. They were huge affairs, like miniature gallows on wheels, and hanging from each of them, with a rope around its neck as if it had been hung, was the stiff corpse of a cow. It took ten men to push each of the cow contraptions, but at last they had them in place side by side, about fifty yards from the opposite sets of tables where the gang members sat.
Stone watched in fascination as the first round of firing began. Three at a time, men from each gang would walk up to a line that was drawn on the street, and when the judges said, “Go!” they opened fire on the things.
“Head!” one of the judges screamed. And the three contestants fired madly at the head of their respective dead cows; .38s and .45s and .9-mms blasted away at the huge, furred corpses, sending them spinning and jerking around wildly. Eye sockets disappeared in a storm of blood and bone; ears were drilled off; noses turned into oozing swamps of red.
“Chest,” a judge screamed through a megaphone. The gunmen lowered their aim, the chest cavities erupted in gushes of pink and brown. The center of the beasts were opened up, the rib cages splintering out like broken umbrellas, the hearts cut into patty appetizers that exploded out the openings as if looking for guests to serve.
“Legs,” a judge commanded after about ten seconds. The fire shifted lower, making the thighs of the things jump around as if they were trying to perform some arcane rock-and-roll dance. Within seconds one of the competitors had completely severed the leg of his cow, and it dropped to the ground. Stone could see the judges making little notations on notepads as they figured out the scores for each man.
And so i
t went for nearly two hours, as gang member after gang member tried his luck. Stone, too, entered the fray, figuring what the hell. He easily worked his way up to the top ranks and then was one of the final three contestants.
The three men were called to the line: Stone; One-armed Carter, the best marksman of the Strathers; and Bronson, who had won the coverted award the year before, and in fact, had it tied to the front of his motorcycle. The three let their hands dangle loosely at their sides as fresh cow bodies were brought in. When they had totally stopped swinging, one of the judges screamed out, “Head!” And the butcher shop of slugs was on.
Stone had opted for the .44 Mag. The Uzi was really for taking out bunches of men, not cows. But Stone knew that the .44, when placed just right, could do the trick. While the other two opened up fast, as if trying to impress the judges with the rapidity of their fire, Stone slowly took out his Redhawk, raised it in a smooth arc, and sighted up the cow, dead center between its eyes. It was the Major’s method: Better to take aim and hit something in two seconds than to get five shots off in one and miss every damn one. By the time the others had already squeezed their trigger five or six times, Stone pulled lightly on the hair action of the .44. The skull of Stone’s cow snapped back like a cannon shell had hit it as the slug entered the big head just two inches down from the eyes and dead center.
It was as if the stress point of the entire skull had been shattered, for the whole center of the big brown-and-white hided face just sort of disappeared, and stuff bubbled out all over the place. Not even wasting a second shot on the thing, as there wasn’t a hell of a lot left to hit, Stone looked to see what the judges were doing. But they just scribbled away without looking his way.
“Chest,” the judge screamed out. Stone sighted up carefully with the red-dot floating sight system down the long chromed barrel of the Ruger. He pulled the trigger, then moved the .44 to the right and down and fired again, then fired a third shot, making a triangular shot pattern. The slugs tore through the air, whistling like teakettles about to explode. They slammed into the chest bones about a foot apart and seemed to rip the whole center section of the cow right out of it. It was as if a saw blade had just been drawn in a jagged circle about a yard wide as the bones erupted out, opening the floodgates for everything wet within to come gushing out onto the street, creating an instant sea, yards wide, of cow intestine and organs. Again Stone stopped firing. He slammed a quickload into the Ruger and had it all loaded up again before the judges yelled, “Legs.”
This time Stone was extra careful, sighting up right at the juncture of thigh and body, while the other two were blazing away madly, like the gunfight at the OK Corral. Stone pulled once, and the lower right leg fell from the huge, swinging carcass. He swung the Ruger to the other side and fired twice in six-inch spacing. The left one erupted in a rain of gristle and bone fragments, hung for a second or two by a few big arteries, and then dropped down to the street below, where it splattered hard against the ground.
Stone raised the .44 up to the upper legs of the huge, blood-spattered beast and fired twice more. Both of them flew down to the broken concrete street as well, like tap dancers looking for work. Stone slid the monstrous pistol back in his hip holster and stood back waiting as the two gangers continued to blast away like they were reenacting the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
It didn’t take long after the firing had ceased for the judges to make their decision. Stone’s cow was a limbless parody of a creature, without legs, without a chest, without even a face anymore. It just hung there, a huge piece of red protoplasm, turning slowly in the hot breeze. It was just what the judges were Looking for, after all. Total and complete annihilation through firepower. No, there was no choice at all—the trophy went to Martin “Preacher Boy” Stone.
Chapter
Sixteen
* * *
Just about everyone was pissed off at Stone—Bronson, One armed Carter, all the gang members from both clans. Who was this scumbag to come out of nowhere and claim what was rightfully theirs? The only people who seemed genuinely pleased by the whole turn of events were the three Strathers brothers themselves, who saw that Preacher Boy’s winning, and the fact that he worked for them, was already starting to swing the balance toward the Strathers. Not having his men blast Stone to death on the spot back at the Get Drunk was one of the best things Vorstel Strathers had ever done, or so he kept mumbling to himself all afternoon as he got drunker and drunker.
But the cow target practice was only the half of it. According to the Strathers brothers, the big fun would be that night. They wouldn’t tell Stone exactly what the fun would be, they just encouraged him to come, bring some betting money, and watch the sport of a lifetime. Stone hung out until he couldn’t hide the fact that he wasn’t drinking any of the green or brown, so he split, not wanting them to think he wasn’t carrying out his hard-drinking Preacher Boy charade.
He walked around sampling some of the evening’s culinary wares. ’Dough all the cooking pots of the peasants who had come to sell their particular recipes were stained and bent, many of their dishes were actually quite tasty. Stone got stuck on fried rattlesnake tail dipped in batter, deep-fried, then rolled in white sugar. It was like nothing he’d ever had before. He wasn’t even sure if he liked them or hated them, but he quaffed three down before he moved on.
His intestines started to do their own snaking around as the afternoon’s food intake hit him like a ton of bricks. He walked with a strange expression on his face through the crowds, seeing an occasional fistfight here and there, but no killings or severed arteries. Such was the law. Any gang member that broke it was subject to death. Just the year before, Bronson had shot one of his men on the spot right on Main Street for slitting the throat of a lower-echelon Strathers man who had spit on his boot.
Back at the whorehouse, the night madam gave him an extremely bizarre look the moment he opened the door.
“You,” she said, staring at him like he had just turned Jesus in to the Romans.
“Me?” Stone said, looking back at her as he walked across the blue-carpeted floor with its erotic images of men and women doing extremely obscene things beneath his feet. “What did ‘he’ do now?” Stone asked, not wanting to hear the answer.
“You mean, what didn’t that damn demon dog do,” the woman replied, shaking her head from side to side like she thought she had seen it all, but she hadn’t until today. “Do you mean the girl he bit on the hand who tried to give him his food? Do you mean the sounds that emanated from u p stairs all day, scaring half our customers out the door? It’s hard to screw when a dog is eating all the furniture and howling continuously as he gallops around pulling a whole goddamn bed behind him. I don’t know if there’s anything left in that room. No one’s been in there all day. Mr. Reacher Boy, isn’t it?” She smirked skeptically, and Stone knew she was on to him in some way. Something in her eyes told him to be real careful around her.
“Look, here’s another ten,” he said, shoveling out a bunch of silver dollars that rolled around on the countertop. Again the money seemed to help, as the woman’s eyes lit up like a wino who’d been handed the keys to a liquor store.
“How long you planning to stay?” the madam asked, trying to smile but not really able to.
“Not more than two or three days,” Stone said, trying to look mean at her, make her think he just might shoot her if she messed with him too much. After all, he was a hard, bloodless killer.
“Let’s say two days, Preacher Boy, at the most. We’re letting you stay here’ cause you’re a personal recommendation of Vorstel. But even that only goes so far. Two days at tops—and you’ve got to chain that animal and muzzle it, or shoot it, or some goddamn thing. You hear me? That psycho hound’s gonna drive me out a business.”
“Chain ’em up—absolutely,” Stone said with a smile as he headed up the stairs on the trot. “Absolutely.” He reached the second floor and threw open the door to his room—and held his breath. It actual
ly wasn’t that much worse than the previous day. But then everything had pretty much already been decimated the day before, anyway. Today the pitbull had been mostly working on truly grinding down what it had ripped apart into wet splinters and odd-shaped little pieces of chair legs, lampposts, and couch arms. Feathers from pillow stuffing were spread out over the entire room like a duck graveyard, and Stone sneezed even as he walked in. The animal had even managed to bend a few of the vertical two-inch-thick bars that formed the backboard of the huge king-size brass bed.
“All right, pal, I get the message,” Stone said as the bed started heading through the debris like the fin of a shark circling its prey. “You don’t like being locked up. Well, I can’t blame you.” He spoke softly, suddenly seeing the whole thing in a different light, from the dog’s point of view. “When I found you, you were locked up inside a Plexiglas cage and you didn’t like that, did you, dog? In fact, I think that’s what I actually admire about you, you homicidal maniac, that you fight to be free—right through the walls if you have to.” As he glanced around the room, Stone saw that indeed the pitbull had taken a few big bites right out of one of the walls, so that huge gouged holes sat there, wood lathing all cracked and bent in and plaster hanging off in clumps.
“All right, dog, get your dancing shoes on, ’cause we’re going partying tonight. But this was easier said than done. Undoing the dog from the bed, Stone wrapped the leash securely around his wrist five times. If the canine took off, it would have to drag him along behind it. He headed down-stairs, and Excaliber strained wildly at the leash, dying to get into the real world, real air, and out the perfumed chamber where he had been slowly going mad. The night madam shrank back in horror as the pitbull came charging down the stairs, snorting and drooling like it was a bull heading for the ring.
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