The Vile Village (17 page)

“So you’re giving me ten-to-one odds, right, Jayson Strather?” the biker leader screamed across the pit. “My three dogs against
your toothless old fart of a lion here.” He laughed loud, and his crew joined in.

“That’s biting it on the balls, Bronson,” the thin, ratlike face yelled back in that taunting, effeminate voice he seemed
to use more and more the drunker he got. “If your dogs last even ten seconds, I’ll be surprised.”

“All right, then,” Bronson bellowed. “I’m betting a thousand.” He motioned for a biker behind him to come forward, pushing
a wheelbarrow with two overstuffed burlap sacks. “Silver dollars every one of them.” The biker sneered, kicking out his foot
sideways so he hit into the side of a bag of silver, which hardly budged an inch. “Can you match it, asshole?”

“Match it.” Jayson mock yawned, putting his powdered hand over his face as his brothers laughed. “A thousand is doughnut money
for us, dearie, what I spend on makeup in a week. Please, please, I’m becoming drastically bored.” He stuffed a whole fingerful
of white powder into each nostril and sucked in hard, getting a strange smile on his face.

“Bored?” Bronson screamed. “Bored?” He ripped the muzzles from the three mastiffs and kicked them right in the asses, sending
the animals over the side and into the pit. The fight was on so fast and moved with such rapidity that Stone could hardly
follow it. But somehow he did, as if following a movie that suddenly jumped to ten times its regular speed, his eyes darting
around the pit. The first dog that came down landed right atop the lion, which was the dog’s bad luck, for the beast was waiting
and ready. Rearing up on its hind legs, it caught the flailing canine with both huge front paws. It batted the dog back and
forth what seemed like three or four times, incredibly fast, and then just threw the bloody thing to the side for later inspection.

The second dog must have thought he was a lion, for he landed right in front of the beast, just as it turned from disposing
of the first. The mastiff opened its jaws, the saliva dripping down in a waterfall, its eyes wide with fear and the instinct
to kill, the only task for which it had been trained. It suddenly leapt forward and caught the lion on the throat. But unfortunately
for the dog, the mane was far too thick for its teeth even to inflict a flesh wound. And the lion didn’t give it a second
chance. It snapped its whole body out and up, sending the dog flying off it. Before the mastiff could launch another attack,
the lion was on it, grabbing the creature by the head, crushing its whole skull in a great gush of blood like a white shark
had just hit it. Taking a second crunch just for good measure, the lion tossed the dog back and forth in the air like a bloody
towel, snapping every bone in the animal’s body until its vertebrae must have been cracked in a thousand places.

Satisfied with the dog’s dishrag status, the huge beast, its saucer-sized eyes glowing red and orange from the flames of the
torches, turned to take on the third animal. But this one wasn’t quite ready for the long haul. It had seen what the animal
had done to its two buddies, and its enthusiasm for the fight had diminished considerably. The lion came toward it as the
mastiff scrambled at the dirt walls of the pit, trying desperately to climb right up the sides. The lion suddenly charged
in and swatted hard at the dog, with an uppercutlike motion of its front paw. Whether it intended to or not, the force of
the blow that struck the mastiff at the same instant it was leaping up from the dirt sent the canine rocketing up into the
air a good fifteen feet. Somehow it caught hold of the dirt sides of the pit, scampering like a paddle wheel on overdrive
as its legs struggled to get a foothold. Which it did. And once up on terra firma, it took off through the crowd at full speed,
headed for less exciting parts and less dangerous vocations.

“Bastard, bastard,” Bronson was muttering from across the pit.

“Looks like I won, darling,” Jayson screeched. “Do go collect my winnings, will you?” He addressed one of the thugs who constantly
hovered around him. The man walked over to the wheelbarrow and started dragging the two loads of silver back.

“They was cowards, that’s what,” Bronson screamed, as if he’d been betrayed by the dogs. “They couldn’t rise to the fuckin’
occasion. They weren’t champions, they were fakes. But there’s more. I know where there’s dogs that’ll chew those up for dinner
and take your pussycat down there and spit him out too. Hold on to my money, assholes. Don’t you spend none of it.” With that,
the biker leader turned angrily and walked off, his people following right behind. The far side of the pit was empty within
seconds as the whole gang disappeared off into the darkness and their motorcycles.

As the underling carried the money over to the Strathers brothers, who wiped their hands together eagerly, he got a little
too close to the edge of the pit and misjudged a step. It’s amazing how little it takes to die. For the weight of the silver
dollars in his arms pulled him straight over, without a chance to recover. He screamed hard on the way down, realizing just
where he was heading. The lion, which had gone over and begun chewing on the dead mastiff’s heart—the first thing any gourmet
lion goes for—heard the falling gang member behind it. It turned, this time slowly, seeing by the way the thing squirmed around
the dirt floor that it couldn’t move fast, couldn’t fight, couldn’t do anything.

“Should I shoot him, boss,” one of the men at the edge of the pit screamed out to Jayson as he pulled out a submachine gun
and lined up the stalking beast below, which was just inches from the man now.

“Kill my lion over some asshole who was clumsy enough to fall in? Hardly.” Jayson laughed. “Besides, Pussy deserves a reward.
Pussy did well in the fight. Shoot and you’re a dead man.” As the gangers around the pit looked on in horror at the man who
had been one of their own, the lion leapt on him and caught the man’s head in his huge, spreading jaws. It crunched hard as
the Strathers minion continued to scream but couldn’t quite break through, like a coconut shell that was just too hard. Then
it bit a little harder, and the skull started to crack so that they could all hear it start to go. Brain fluids and slime
suddenly poured out around the screaming man’s face in a gush of hot tissue.

The lion crunched hard again, and this time it broke through. Like a walnut suddenly being squeezed by a nut-cracker, the
whole head exploded, the bone shattering in all directions, pieces of hair still attached. The entire brain itself, still
throbbing inside, was exposed like a slug in a broken shell. The lion, holding the body up with both paws like a child playing
with a doll, looked down at the glistening, undulating pink delicacy and opened its mouth. It swallowed the brain down whole
with its long, sandpaperlike tongue, like a Wall Street exec taking down an oyster on the half shell as he rushed to catch
the 4:45 to Hartford. The lion looked down into the hollow head to see whether there was any more of the delicious-tasting
stuff and let out a whine of displeasure when it saw none. Knocking the brainless corpse down to the dirt, it began ripping
open the stomach, and all the goodies that were contained there poured out. The dogs would be dessert.

“When he’s full, sedate him and bring him back to the office,” Jayson commanded his animal handlers as the other brothers
rose with distinct expressions of happiness on their twisted faces. “And please,
do
wash off the money before you put it into the basement vaults. Blood
does
mess things up so.”

Stone and Excaliber turned and headed off back to his room. They both looked shell-shocked, staring straight ahead, not even
looking at each other. The pitbull had always prided itself on being afraid of nothing. And it hadn’t been, until tonight.
But the lion had scared the shit out of the animal and, because of that emotion—cowardice—it was filled with shame, the first
time it had ever felt such a thing. But in its mind, as its fighting breed always did, it planned and visualized just how
it would take out the carnivore—if it ever came after him.

“P
reacher Boy, you done real good yesterday,” Vorstel said the next afternoon, his lips moving around his three twisted teeth
in that prune of a mouth like he was trying to chew them down. The three brothers sat in their armchairs looking at Stone,
who was in the “guest” chair about ten feet across the room. Vorstel, in particular, seemed all aglow about the contest. Stone’s
success at winning the trophy had reflected back on him and for the moment had added to his political power, his prestige
over the other two. Since they were teens, they had all continually jockeyed for being topman, holding up people, ripping
off cars, and then, after the collapse of what had been America, they found that their talents for ruthlessness, greed, and
the ability to kill without mercy were excellent traits to possess in the new world. But as always, they trusted each other
about as much as they trusted anyone else in this lying world. And Stone’s trophy had complicated the already complex web
of alliance and double dealings between them.

“Yes, you made me so proud yesterday,” Jayson said, waving a sheer blue silk handkerchief back and forth in front of his nose
like a fan. He was heavily made up today, with rouge on his cheeks and a purple-tinted lipstick. He was fiddling with long
false fingernails, gluing them on one by one. They looked, actually, quite deadly, curving, Stone noticed, to sharp tips with
steel points on them. The lion chained by Jayson’s side was sound asleep, its stomach still distended after the meal of last
night. Its face was dyed red with blood, as were its claws. Stone wondered why his throat always felt constricted when he
was in this room, like he wanted to just get up and run the hell out of there.

“So’s we’ve decided to trust you,” Rudolf said, his head seeming to sink ever deeper into his neckless chest, “and make you
an official officer in our little thing here. Oh, we ain’t got sergeants, lieutenants, any of that shit. We got asshole, chief
asshole, scumbag, top bag, and asskicker. We’re willing to make you an asskicker, Preacher Boy, an unparalyzed opportunity.”

“That’s―unparalleled opportunity,’ you puke-brain,” Jayson screamed loudly, fixing his brother with a cold stare. “You do
have to excuse my two brothers here,” Jayson said, addressing Stone dramatically, “they have the IQs of lower life-forms.
It is I who really run things. But let me translate what the others are trying to say. We think you have the makings of a
topman. You follow orders, take care of some nasty business, and the sky’s the limit. That money you’re after, it’s already
here. See how quickly things come to those who pray to AI?” He pointed over to the bag of silver dollars that he had won from
Bronson the night before. The lion was using it to stretch one of its legs out on.

“Who do I have to kill?” Stone laughed harshly.

“A bunch of scum fanners about twenty miles from here. The bastards have been meeting, organizing, trying to stop paying us
what’s rightfully ours for protecting them from the Head Stompers. We had to take out a bunch of ’em a few days ago, but now
we got word that the crazy sons of bitches are going to try again. They’re going to meet tonight. We got someone on the inside—one
of their top leaders—so we know their every move. Where the meeting will be, when, everything.” Jayson reached over and scratched
the lion with the steel-tipped fingernails of his right hand, digging into the mane. The huge beast let out with a purr that
sounded like a diesel truck getting ready to shift into high gear.

“Sure,” Stone said, squinting over at the lion, which had opened one eye and was looking straight at him like maybe it was
starting to build up an appetite again. “Sounds like fun. A hell of a lot of fun.”

“Excellent, excellent,” Jayson exclaimed, sitting up straight and clapping his hands together. The other brothers smiled broadly—at
least that’s what Stone thought they were doing—but everything was so mangled up on the big mugs that it was hard to tell
just what the hell was going on there.

“You’ll lead a six man enforcer team,” Vorstel said, cutting in on Jayson and giving him a dirty look. “You run the show top
to bottom. Take out everyone and anyone you have to, whether it’s one or fifty. We gotta stop this damn thing in the fucking
bud.” The brothers all looked at him, intently trying to see past his poker face. But Stone just smiled back greedily and
glanced over at the sack of loot.

“For a bag of silver that fucking big, I’d strangle my own mother.”

That night seven heavily armed men crawled through the darkness on the outskirts of the Hernandez farm, a scraggly, two-acre
stretch that the brothers had given Stone the directions to. Hernandez was the one who’d come to Undertaker’s place when Stone
had been there. So it was coming full circle already, Stone mused as he moved through the darkness in the lead of the death
squad. His plans were moving faster than he had figured, taking off, hitting rocket speed. He prayed he could hang on.

They had taken a beat-up old Ford station wagon with ancient, fake wood paneling on the side scrawled with graffiti about
what the Head Stompers ate, did, and fucked. They parked the coughing vehicle about a mile from the place and then headed
in with shotguns, subs, .45s, even a few grenades. Everything a man might need to create a mass slaughter of little old farmers
who would be meeting inside a horse shed. The six killers treated Stone with respect. They had seen his shooting ability the
day before. He was clearly someone not to fuck with.

They came up to the shed through some woods until they could see the flickering lanterns inside, a number of voices trying
to talk softly. Stone gathered the Strathers’ assassins around him.

“You three,” Stone said, motioning to the men to the right of him, “will take to the right flank. I see a door there. You
three take the left, through the window. I’ll come in the front.”