“Here, Doc,” Stone grunted as he half pushed, half kicked the big body of the alkie doctor into a closet. “Thanks for the treatment—I’ll tell all my friends to come here for every little injury.” He slammed the door shut and walked quickly out of the chamber of horrors. But the shit was about to hit the fan, of that there was no fucking doubt. He’d have to get the hell out of town, fight from the outside. It was too But there was no getting around it. His cover was as blown as the Hindenburg.
Stone walked outside, looking around carefully to make sure no one was keeping an untoward eye on him. But as far as he could tell, there were just a few drunken stragglers heading back to their filthy little rooms somewhere to sleep it off. He shifted his hip holster and pulled his jacket back slightly so he could have quick access. Somehow he had a feeling he was going to need it. He’d get the dog and then get the fuck out of there.
As he slipped back to the whorehouse through the back alleys rather than the main streets, every dark window he passed seemed menacing, as if barrels were poking from every sill. It was that doctor, that’s all, Stone told himself. The murderous old bastard had set him completely edge, just having to touch that bloated flesh.…
He reached the whorehouse by going over a few fences and came in through one of the back screen doors. He entered a room filled with supplies for the house—buckets, mops, a stack of wood for the winter—and started forward into the dimly lit hallway. Suddenly there was a motion to his right, and a shape leapt forward, slamming an ax handle down on his head. Stone parried the blow at the last fraction of a second, taking a hard strike on his forearm, but stopping the handle from reaching his head. As he started forward, to throw a smashing blow to his attacker’s face, he sensed movement again right behind him. And even as the baseball bat descended on the back of his head, his father’s admonition, “Where there’s one, there’s two,” echoed around in his head like a record stuck in its groove.
Chapter
Nineteen
* * *
The first thing he heard when he came to were angels singing. Only they were singing off-key, and as he came out of the painful blackness, Stone saw that they weren’t angels at all, and they weren’t singing. It was one of the Strathers brothers—Vorstel—and he was looking down at Stone from above, as if he were just about the funniest damn thing Vorstel had ever seen in all his days. Stone tried to move and found that his wrists and legs were completely immobilized. He was strapped down.
“You fucked up, didn’t you, Preacher Boy?” Vorstel sneered, his three-toothed mouth twisting around like the face of some nightmarish eel at the bottom of the sea. “You almost got away with it, asshole, except for one thing. Jayson saw you pick up that piece of chain yesterday. He figured you was saving it for a memento. But you wasn’t, was you? You was planning to double-cross us.” His fist suddenly slammed down, and Stone’s head rocketed around on his body like it was thinking about flying off on vacation somewhere.
“That’s for lying,” Vorstel said, glaring down, his smile now changed to something else, something twisted. “And this”—he grinned, cocking the fist again so that it looked like it was as big as a sledgehammer—“is for making an asshole out of me in front of my brothers, since I brought you into our thing.” The knuckle meteor came straight down into the side of Stone’s head, and again his consciousness went on and off, like a light bulb flickering from a shorting wire.
Then Stone heard a scream that was even louder than the explosions in his skull, and the blurred shadow above him suddenly disappeared.
“Hey, don’t start without me, you bastard,” Vorstel yelled, and Stone heard him take about six steps, his boots slamming hard on the concrete floor. He heard what sounded like the droning whir of a piece of machinery, and then another scream, this one much shriller and more drawn-out than the previous one. In fact, it didn’t stop. Somehow Stone raised his head, which wasn’t tied down, and saw Vorstel and his brother, Rudolf, in front of a large metal device about fifteen feet away. It must have been some kind of press, for a huge, flat, square section about five feet by five feet was being lowered down onto another similarly shaped section. Only someone’s arm was being held inside the thing. And it was just a kid.
Bronson’s son, Stone realized in a flash, as his brain cells returned to a state of semi-functioning inside his battered skull. The bastards had put the kid’s hand inside an ancient paper press, and it was coming down a fraction of an inch at a time onto the hand, which was tied around the wrist to the edge of the thing.
“Let me turn that damn contraption,” Vorstel exclaimed loudly, his voice echoing off the stark concrete was of what Stone assumed to be the brothers’ torture chamber, since there were various other tables around, and a man, maybe dead, sitting half propped up against a wall at the far side of the room.
“Oh, here you go, for chrissake,” Rudolf said, standing back and letting his sibling have a go at the wheel, which was attached to a pulley system that slowly brought the flat press down. He looked over at the eight-year-old boy’s face as if enjoying seeing the pain on it, pain caused by him as he turned the wheel. The son of Bronson was trying to act brave. He looked like a miniature version of his old man, bald head, tattoo on each side of his skull, wearing leather pants and vest with studs. But still, he was just a boy, and as the press slowly came down and crushed his bones and flesh and muscle all together into a sludge of red, the lad let out with the most unearthly sound that Stone had ever heard.
“Now, my turn on the other hand,” Rudolf demanded, pushing Vorstel out of the way. “You can’t hog the damn press for every fucking part of him.” Vorstel turned around for a second to look at Stone, who was watching the scene with a sickened expression, as the press was slowly raised back up again about a foot above the smashed hand, and a whole flood of ooze and slime dripped down over the side of the rusting metal and onto the floor. There was nothing left of the hand at all—just the crushed stump of the lad’s wrist, which ended at the very base of what had been the hand. The boy looked down at it, his eyes wide, as if they’d just seen God. He couldn’t even scream—his mouth just hung on, his tongue sort of moving around inside like a worm trying to get off a fishhook.
“Ain’t that something,” Vorstel yelled over when he saw Stone watching. “Just got it last week. Ain’t had a chance to test it out. But it works fine, works just fine. And Mr. whoever-the-hell-you-are”—Vorstel sneered, his heavily lidded eyes narrowing—“after we crush this little fucker, crush every little bit of him into Jell-O, then we’re going to start on you, friend. And I’ll just let you wonder where we’re going to start first.” With that, he turned back to see just what the hell was going on, as he didn’t want to miss a bit of the action. Rudolf had tied the boy’s other hand to the side of the press and was pushing it in with one hand while he turned the wheel that lowered the top slab of metal with the other. The boy watched as the press came down, watched as his eyes grew bigger and bigger, his pulp of a right hand hanging limply at his side, sending a little waterfall of red and pink down onto the floor.
Stone knew he had minutes, maybe seconds, to live. Once the boy was either squashed or dead—whichever came first—they would vent their sadistic madness on him. And he knew one thing—that though he didn’t mind dying, he didn’t want to go out like that. Please, God, not like what they were doing to that poor little murderous son of a bitch over there. He searched desperately through his mental bag of tricks as he tested his bindings, pulling hard, but with hardly any motion so as not to catch their attention, though there wasn’t much danger of that as the blood perverts were firmly rooted in what was gong on in front of them.
His left wrist was slightly loose. Not much, but there was just enough slack so that when he turned it, he could feel that he could almost slip under the leather binding. Stone twisted and pulled at the damn thing like a snake caught in a trap, trying to free himself. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, for every second seemed like an hour as he heard the boy�
��s screams start up again when the press started to squeeze against his right hand.
Stone’s arm suddenly snapped free of the bindings at the exact second that Vorstel just happened to glance over to see how his honored guest was doing.
“Motherfucker,” he screamed, “he’s getting out, he’s getting out.” They stopped what they were doing, leaving the press just as it was starting to crush the bones below, and came roaring over toward Stone, pulling huge hunting knives from inside their jackets.
“Son of a fucking—” Stone snarled to himself as he reached down toward his boot, straining with every sinew to get to the push dagger hidden inside the heel of his right boot. At least it would give him a weapon, as Stone saw that his pistols had been stripped from him. But he wasn’t going to get the chance, for the two brothers were tearing ass toward him like they were in the hundred-yard dash. With a push of breath to relax himself, Stone suddenly shifted his whole body and pulled the entire table he was on right over on its side. The thing crashed with a great roar, as it was made of steel, and Stone felt himself jarred hard as he hit shoulder and hip first onto the concrete floor.
But it brought him a few seconds of precious time as the brothers slammed into the legs of the thing and got tangled up in the mess, the table creating a momentary obstacle. Stone reached down for the boot, struggling hard, as it was just beyond his reach at the half-crunched angle he was lying in, with half the weight of the table on him. Then somehow he reached his boot and pushed the heel hard to the right, catching the three-inch-long blade as it fell into his hand. He fitted the small knife in his palm and gripped his fingers over the hilt. It was designed with the blade coming out of the middle of the handle and pointing straight out, perpendicular from it. Thus the user could grip his whole hand around the handle and have the knife blade project forward right between his fingers. It was a commando ace-in-the-hole, just one of the Major’s many little “last-resort” tricks. It certainly qualified for that category.
Stone pulled himself out straight again and slashed at the binding of the other hand, which cut Loose with a single slice. Then he leaned forward again and freed his right foot. But time was running out—he could hear them rising, untangling themselves, coming around each side of the table. He was reaching to cut the final binding when Vorstel appeared from the left, his face snarling like a dog with rabies, foam and whatnot bubbling out from his enraged lips. He raised his immense hunting knife and started to bring it down like a machete, but Stone lashed out with his free leg. It was just a snap kick, not even that hard, but then they didn’t have to be when they were aimed right against the opening of the kneecap. And this one was right on target. The huge killer buckled and crashed to the ground like a safe thrown from a second-story window.
Stone sliced at the binding, which took two cuts to sever. He felt the shadow of Rudolf closing in on him from the left, just as his leg pulled free. Stone didn’t even try to block. Instead, he moved in the direction of his body, which was slightly facing forward, and somersaulted low to the ground. Rudolf’s blade descended like an ax, slamming straight into the side of the table. So immense was his strength and momentum that the super-hardened steel blade bit right into the stainless-steel table for several inches with a shrill fingernail-on-blackboard kind of sound.
But Stone was gone—the somersault took him right over Vorstel, who was just starting to rise up onto one knee, lifting his knife again. Stone used the big ganger’s back as a kind of ramp, and he rolled right over the top, coming down about two yards away against one of the concrete walls that ringed the basement chamber. He turned on a dime, and not too soon, since Vorstel had gotten up and was charging at him like a maddened bull. With a tilt of his head Stone dodged the knife blade that was thrust out suddenly. He stepped quickly to the right at a forty-five-degree angle, using the momentum of Vorstel’s body to let it go slightly past him. Gripping the push dagger in his left hand, Stone went into boxing stance and jabbed out hard into the huge ganger’s left rib cage.
The knife flew in and out like a jackhammer. Vorstel didn’t even quite know what happened, though a little tremor of something ran across his face. As he turned to face Stone, he felt another stab of pain in his gut, then in the side of his arm. Stone just kept jabbing out, circling quickly around the man as he kept his eye on Rudolf, who was stuck for a few seconds trying to dislodge his knife, which he had embedded in the steel operating table. It was easier to get it in than to get it out.
Vorstel didn’t know what the hell was happening. He was huge, a monster, had killed countless numbers of men, usually with one blow. But Stone was fast, and he wasn’t about to fight the oversized killer’s way. He fought in his own nasty style—it was called survival. So as Vorstel lunged wildly forward over and over again—it being the one method of fighting he had ever had to practice—Stone danced around the gang topman, snapping out the hand with the blade poking out from between his middle two fingers. Again and again the knife ripped into flesh, then pulled out. All over Vorstel’s body, big blotches of red were oozing through his clothes. He was a pincushion, one that bled.
Suddenly Stone saw the man’s face cloud up for a second, as boxers do when they’ve taken a hard shot. Vorstel stopped for a moment, looked down at the butchered flesh that was his own body, and turned a ghostly shade of green. For he realized why he hurt—he hadn’t even seen the blade in Stone’s hand, just the fist snapping out. But now he saw it. And having killed so many, Vorstel knew just by the amount of blood streaming from him, from the number of stab wounds, that he was a dead man.
But Stone wasn’t going to allow the dying man to call a priest. He saw his chance and took it. The instant he saw Vorstel look down and lose his concentration for a moment, Stone stepped right in front of the gang leader and ripped the blade across the man’s throat. Right to left, then left to right. He stepped back as the throat exploded out in an avalanche of red, which splattered over the floor and Stone’s boots and pants. Vorstel’s knife fell from his fingers as he threw both hands over the throat, gripping it, as if trying to strangle himself. But as much as he tried to hold it all inside, like someone stuffing dirt under a rug, there was just a little too much junk pouring out of him. He staggered backward and slammed hard into the wall, cracking the back of his head, though it hardly mattered anymore.
“Cchh, yhhhhgghh!” He was clearly trying to say some-thing as he stared right at Stone, but for the life of him, Stone couldn’t understand what it was. Then he dropped to the floor in a sitting position, and his hands fell away from the throat, the lifeless eyes still focused on the man who had just killed him.
Stone heard a sudden sound and whipped around, holding the knife at ready. But he was too late—Rudolf was there, right in his face, the huge knife with the cracked bone handle coming in like an ICBM from hell. Stone knew in a fraction of an instant that he was a dead man. That he couldn’t duck, move, dive, parry, or stab the bastard who was just a foot from his nose and coming at about ninety miles per hour. His whole body tensed up as it prepared to die. And then, though his father would have whipped his hide, Stone closed his eyes just for a second as the knife came right toward them.
He waited for the blow but felt nothing. Then he heard a wet thud and a gurgling sound. By the time his eyes opened, only a second later, Rudolf was already flying past. And embedded in his back was a round saber-saw blade a foot in diameter. The steel blade had penetrated the man’s back, severed his spine like a piece of balsa wood, cut through his lungs, popping them like balloons, and then continued out through the front so that about ten of the jagged, inch-long cutting teeth poked out, like the jaws of some hideous larva eating its way from the inside out. The man kept running past Stone, as if he were late for his own funeral, and slammed headfirst into one of the concrete walls, smashing his face into bloody mashed potatoes. The whole mess just sort of slithered to the floor, where it lay all ripped and red like something ready for landfill.
Stone turned his head a
nd saw the Bronson kid. He was standing about thirty feet away across the room and was holding his stump of a hand with an expression of raw pain dancing across his face. But the little fucker had clearly thrown the blade, one of the brothers’ many toys lying around the room. The kid had thrown it all the way across the basement and managed to take out a killer whom a hundred other men hadn’t been able to. And even in the midst of his agony, the kid managed a grim smile for Stone, as if to say, “We fucked these assholes up pretty bad, didn’t we?”
Stone looked back across the vast distance of blood and savagery that separated him from the biker boy and whispered, “Yeah.”
Chapter
Twenty
* * *
Stone tourniqueted the kid’s hideous stump. There wasn’t a hell of a lot else he could do. The biker brat needed an operation at a hospital with a team of neurosurgeons, which, since there were no functioning hospitals in the entire country, was an unlikely proposition to say the least. But once the main stream of blood was slowed so he at least knew the kid wouldn’t bleed to death, Stone knew he couldn’t do any more. He retrieved his pistols from where they were hanging on a wall and handed the kid one of the dead brothers’ blood-splattered guns—a World War II Luger all scraped and bent like it had been through about ten wars. The kid seemed reluctant at first to accept the weapon. He had been trained in killing multiple opponents with knives, chains, blades, and tricks of every kind. But not guns. His biker clan used them only as a last resort. But after thinking about the fact that he had only one hand now—and wasn’t feeling his greatest—the kid took it and gripped it hard.
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