The Vile Village (7 page)

“Thanks,” Stone said softly. “Thanks for all you—”

“Oh, hush up,” she said, putting her hand over his mouth. “You say thanks more than any man I ever met. Just what any good
neighbor would do for another.”

“Yeah, right,” Stone said bitterly, knowing that was not quite the way it was. She rose and walked to the center of the room
where an oil lamp was burning out a smoky light. She turned it down until it was just a tab of flame, emitting a tiny golden
halo that throbbed out onto the walls.

Then before Stone knew it, just as he began slipping into dreams, seeing shapes in the weaving shadows created by the flickering
oil flame, she was alongside him. And she was naked too. He could feel her hot flesh like a live wire suddenly touching him
all along one side.

“LuAnn,” said Stone in the near darkness.

“It’s okay,” her voice answered back like silk. “It’s part of the cure.” With that she reached down and began stroking him
along the leg, then the stomach. Within seconds she began moving faster, and Stone could hear little groans of pleasure coming
from her mouth, her lips pushed hard against his neck.

“Your work’s not over,” she said with a trace of laughter.

“But, LuAnn, your father, he’ll—” The idea of Under-taker’s four-hundred-plus pounds coming after him was not something Stone
wished to contemplate.

“Oh, we all do what we want around here, are you kid-ding? Why, as you saw, he don’t remember half our names. As long we do
our share of the work, that keeps Pa happy. But I need something else to keep me happy.”

“What’s that?” Stone said, half desiring, half fearing the answer.

“You,” she said lustily. “Ain’t seen no man like you around here for a long time. Most of the guys living in these here woods
got something wrong with they heads. Scared, or dumb, or some damn thing or other. But you, I like you.” She rose above him
and looked down at him, and even in the golden darkness Stone could see her eyes, big and wide and filled with aching desire.
And suddenly he didn’t care how bone-tired he was, his body was going to give this beautiful young woman what she wanted,
or he was personally going to kick its ass.

But Stone’s hormones were already flowing, and suddenly he had plenty of energy for whatever was called for. She rubbed her
hands up and down the sides of his body, squeezing him hard, and he returned the gesture. Somehow he had thought she was inexperienced—that
angelic face, those crystal-blue eyes, her tresses of blond hair. There was some-thing about her that pulled up some image
in his deep unconscious of what the ideal woman should look like. LuAnn was definitely in the right direction.

But if inexperience was what he had visualized, Stone had another think coming. The girl was like a wildcat. He was just getting
going, kissing her hard, pulling her tighter against him as he found his blood starting to boil and his body go from dead
to raging horniness in the space of about one minute, when she completely be loose. It was as if a chain had been broken,
a ribbon cut, a rope severed, for all of a sudden she was all over him, grinding against him as if she were a cat in heat.
She made little unintelligible noises from deep in her throat and lay on top of Stone, pressing her full, hot breasts against
his chest.

She spread her creamy thighs far apart and began moving up and down atop him like a snake, all squirming around, making herself
ready for him. Stone felt his own manhood rising up like a flag is run up the pole in the morning, and soon he was at full
staff, ready to salute and go to war. He grabbed her had around her buttocks, which were fine but pliant, as was every part
of her luscious flesh. She was soft, curved in all the right places, and strong too. Stone could feel the firm flesh as he
cupped her breasts and pulled her ass, trying to bring her ever closer, harder against his own muscled flesh.

Her mouth clamped down on his, and her small tongue darted in and out like it was alive. His mouth took hers, sending his
own tongue in and wrapping it over hers so she gave in to him, opening her mouth, letting her body go limp.

“I’m yours,” she hissed in his ear like a feline beast, with a deep, guttural, lust-filled whisper. “Do what you want with
me, take me, take me.” He reached down and grabbed hold of the hot, moist triangle of fur between her tensed thighs. His hand
gripped around it hard, like he was grabbing a small, fury beast running across the bed. Then he slipped in a finger between
the swollen lips. The scent of flowers and musk and sugary tastes swept over him as she let out a long moan and seemed to
sink down onto the probing finger until he was pushing hard into her, his finger up to the second knuckle.

Then it was as if the dam completely burst, and she threw her head back and started going up and down on the raised finger
like a machine. And every time, trying to take it deeper, as if his whole hand might go inside her. She was moaning all the
time now, and saying his name over and over again like a little mantra, a private prayer of supreme ecstasy. At that moment
she was for him—only him—with not another thought in the world.

Then she could take it no longer, so intense did her female desire become. She let out a high-pitched, catlike howl and lifted
herself fast from atop him so that his hand fell away, wet and perfumed with her delicious dew. She reached down with both
hands and felt for him, for his maleness. Again she seemed to go half mad, gripping at it with both hands, running her fingers
up and down the pole of flesh as if she had never felt anything so exquisite before. Then she pumped at him with both fists
locked tight around the organ and kept at it until Stone swore he would explode.

Suddenly she stopped and rose up over him. She spread herself apart for him and, closing her eyes, sank down atop the raised
wand of flesh like an oil drill probing into the very earth. With a great scream of joy she let her body go and sank down
full onto the thing until she was flat against his stomach, totally impaled by the sexual tool.

If Stone thought he had made love with wild women be-fore, they had been like Doris Day compared to the creature atop him.
For she went wild. Her entire body jerked and bucked and twisted around him. Gritting her teeth hard, almost as if she were
in pain, the woman ground around on Stone as if she were trying to grind his pelvis into flour. And Stone contributed his
part too. As tired as he was. As much as his muscles just didn’t want to move—the instinct of desire was just too powerful
to resist. After all, men with mortal wounds had been known to grab and “have knowledge of” field nurses in wartime. The most
powerful instinct of all. To merge, to become one with the other in paroxysms of animal joy.

It didn’t take them long. Not at the breakneck speed they were going. Flesh flying, crescendoing groans, spittle coming from
their mouths. Then their breathing grew faster and faster, and their bestial noises increased and joined together until they
sounded like a chorus of barnyard animals having a go at it with each other behind the barn.

Their bodies exploded together—her with her mouth thrown far open and her eyes twitching in her head like eggs in a blender.
Stone, holding her firmly as she froze above him, his eyes wide open, looking at her, taking in her exquisite young body as
he poured his maleness into her in an eruption of lava. The simultaneous bursts of their volcanic passion seemed to shake
the very bed beneath them, transport them to another place away from what was to a land of only what should be—the beautiful,
the perfect—the orgasmic transmutation.

S
tone had terrible dreams for the next few nights. Even as his body healed rapidly from the medicines and the lovemaking with
LuAnn each night, the images of those beheaded farmers, of the sobbing widows and orphaned children left behind in a world
that was already hard enough, all hardened Stone’s own heart as well. And on the fourth morning after the burial, and a full
week and a half since he’d been caught in the high-rad rains, Stone sat down face-to-face with Undertaker at the kitchen table.
The kitchen children were just cleaning up. The rest were out performing their farm and corpse-preparation chores. A mother
and her three young children had been chewed up by a wild dog pack. The incident had occurred just over the ridge, and the
Hanson clan buzzed about it all night, constantly telling their own dumb dogs, who preferred hanging out around the kitchen
more than guarding anything, to keep a special lookout that night and bark goddamn loud if they heard anything.

“Why don’t you say what’s on your mind, Mr. Stone?” Undertaker asked him as they both finished the last bitter dregs of Undertaker’s
“coffee.” “You have a peculiar look in your eyes, and you been talking about nothing but them dead farmers for days, or so
my young Sharon—Linda—whatever the hell her name said,” Undertaker laughed.

“LuAnn,” Stone said, shaking his head in amazement. It was true what she had said—her father didn’t even quite know exactly
who she was.

“Yeah—her. Been telling me you keep asking about how many kids they left behind, and if they had any food. And now you’re
talkie’ about heading into Cotopaxi to pay the most murdering town in the territory a little visit. So I’m just askin’ again,
what’s on your mind?”

“You have your skills, Undertaker,” Stone said softly. “And you’re damn good at them. I’ve learned a lot from you in these
few days, but—but I have my skills, too, the skills that bring you customers. The skills of the Nadi.” Stone hesitated to
say it, the word that the Ute Indians who had saved his life months before had given him. Nadi—he with the gift of giving
death. “So I just think I should check out a crowd that likes to saw off men’s heads in front of their kids. I want to see
what kind of men would do it. That’s all—just curiosity.”

“I’ve heard the name Nadi,” Undertaker said, his voice changed, almost fearful. He suddenly realized he had misjudged Stone,
which seemed to unsettle him. And for the first time he shut up, turned pale, and sat back just a little.

“Nadi. They don’t give
that
name out too easily,” Under-taker said, staring at Stone as if something were floating behind his head. “Well, then, I guess
you know what you’re doing. And I sure won’t be the man to question it. But all the same, watch your step in there. Some of
the baddest dudes around inhabit that town. And they’re all looking for a fight, all looking to make a rep as the toughest
of the tough. It don’t take much to get ’em started in Cotopaxi. How the hell you think we get so much business?”

“That’s the way I like them,” Stone said with a dark grin. “Mean and dumb.”

“Well, if you ever want to join on here, you got a job as an Apprentice Undertaker. I been watching you the last few days
you been helping out around here. You got good eyes, good coordination. All the right qualities to be a full-service funeral
director.”

“Well, that’s mighty kind,” Stone said, taking the last sip of the fake coffee, the only kind he was likely to see for a while.
“And maybe someday I’ll take you up on that if the offer still stands. Right now I got other things to do first. Like I said,
making corpses, for better or worse, seems to have been my vocation for the last few months since I left my father’s bunker
and came topside. Not tucking them in with the daisies.”

LuAnn came to his attic room as he was packing his few belongings after having just made the bed.

“Going to run off like the others,” LuAnn said. “And, not even say a word. I thought you were different.”

“I wouldn’t have left without coming to say good-bye,” Stone said, walking over to her and grabbing her around the lower part
of her back with both hands. He pulled her close and locked her in a long, tight kiss. When they broke for air, she stepped
away and was laughing.

“Well, I guess I
did
make an impression on you, after all,” she said said as she saw his eyes start to light up like they had whenever they had
made love over the last few nights.

“Damn right,” Stone replied as he flipped his pack up over his shoulder and started toward the stairs. “And you better believe
I’m coming back here, whether I’m alive or in need of one of those boxes you all make so well, I’ll be back.”

“Don’t say that,” she said, suddenly going pale. “Please Martin. I—I—”

“Love is hard to hold right now, baby,” Stone said, pausing at the door for a moment as he looked over at her, his eyes suddenly
soft and vulnerable. “I have too many unfinished tasks—not the least of which is finding my sister, April. It’s not a world
that nourishes love, baby. I wish it were different. I wish—” He turned and started quickly down the stairs, not wanting her
to see the tears forming in his own eyes.

He found Excaliber outside. He hadn’t paid much attention to the dog over the last few days, other than noting that it seemed
to be alive and eating its share of chow. But when Stone’s attention was actually on the animal as he headed across the main
yard, he noticed that it was playing with a bunch of farm dogs, shepherds, collies, mutts. Stone started ahead fast, with
an expression of growing horror on his face. He had seen what Excaliber could do, and it didn’t like dogs.

But as usual, just when he thought he was starting to get an understanding of the pitbull, it went and did something that
totally destroyed his preconceptions. It licked the face of a huge Labrador retriever, then barked happily jumping in the
air. Stone called to the animal, shaking his head from side to side as he headed toward the motorcycle. But he had only just
begun to scold himself for misjudging the pitbull so terribly when it did something to completely sabotage
that
idea as well. As a shepherd got a little too close and opened its jaws a little too wide, Excaliber went down on both knees
in a flash, like a wrestler preparing for a throw. He sank both teeth around the animal’s lower front leg and pulled hard
so the dog came crashing down on its face. They were “playing” around on grass and loose dirt, so the shepherd wasn’t hurt,
but the animal, which must have outweighed Excaliber by a good forty pounds, nonetheless rose and backed off like it didn’t
want anything to do with the pitbull. The others, too, shrank back in nervousness as the bullterrier looked around, happily
wagging his tail again, confused as to what was wrong.