The Vile Village (15 page)

I
t was the Fourth of July. If Stone had forgotten about it, he sure as hell was reminded of it by a hand-cranked record player
that turned out tunes from the old days: “America the Beautiful,” “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was absurd. For it was “America
the Ugly” now, and “The Blood-Spangled Banner.” But still, Stone felt a stirring in his chest at the tunes, played slightly
too slowly, and echoing up and down the street like a cackling joke.

He sat up in the bed, realizing he had been dreaming about April. She was being… He didn’t want to think about it. It was
as if thinking about it might make it happen. It was the ancient fear of the primitive—that his very dreams would come true.
Before Stone blew him away, Alamoso, the mafia gunner, had told him she’d been taken by the mob. But they wouldn’t hurt her.
More likely the mob would treat her with kid gloves. For Stone knew they would use her as bait to lure him. And he would come
as surely as a dumb fish rises to the lure.

But he had to do something here first. Stone was realizing, as his father had before him, that his responsibility fell to
more than just his own blood. If he did have the “gift” to kill, if he was in fact the last of the Rangers, carrying on all
that his father, the last man to give a damn at freedom and slavery, good and evil, had taught him, then it was beyond Stone
even to dictate his own life. He was caught up in a web that was bigger than all of them, one that would decide whether America
turned to complete barbarism or rose again out of the ashes, the pits of bones, the rivers of blood.

He rose up, aching, his body still not quite used to work, to movement. The walking around of the day before had made everything
in him get all shook up. But though he felt stiff and still a little feverish, he was definitely heading back toward the living.
It was amazing what LuAnn’s goo had done for him and the dog. Stone glanced over at Excaliber, who was sleeping at the foot
of the bed, the long chain draped around him leading back to the railing of the brass bed Stone slept on. His fur was already
growing back in the numerous places in which he had been burned. It was a little whiter than the rest but it was filling in
nicely. Still, the damn mutt was starting to get scarred up, like Stone. They were both dogs of war.

Stone got up, trying not to rouse the pitbull, as he knew it would start demanding things. He got into his clothes, strapped
on his pistols, and headed to the door. It was only half open when a whine from behind stopped him in his tracks. Stone turned
with a sheepish On, since he knew that the dog knew that he had been trying to sneak out on it. The animal looked at Stone
skeptically and licked its lips, suddenly getting up and challengingly starting to pull the brass bed an inch or two.

“All right, all right, for chrissake, you little blackmailer.” Stone closed the door and headed down, wondering if there was
a good dog-obedience school open in the neighborhood. He told the day madam downstairs, the cute one with the pixie now and
tits that would have made watermelons feel inadequate, to throw some more steaks into the room. He pulled out ten silver dollars
and tossed them down onto the counter.

“That’s for the curtains, chairs, you know,” Stone said, looking a little embarrassed. The damn hound was starting to cost
bucks. The madam took the glistening coins and looked at them with a primal lust. Then she kissed each one and dropped it
between her ample bosoms, the cleavage big enough to hold a whole bank.

“Tell me,” Stone said, scratching his face and realizing that he was starting to look like the Abominable Snowman again. The
madam pulled back an inch or two, as if Stone had fleas. Which, come to think of it, he suddenly realized, feeling itchy all
over, was not at all impossible. “What’s all that racket outside? The Happy Marching Murder Band?”

“It’s the Fourth of July, mister. What you been taking?” She looked askance at him, as if he were completely and totally out
of it. “Biggest celebration we got here in Cotopaxi. The one day of the year that the two gangs—the Strathers and the Head
Stompers—have a truce. No fighting or killing allowed on this day. No, sir. But lots of drinking, shooting contests, all kinds
of stuff. It’s fun, a barrel of laughs,” she said, looking forlorn. “I just pray I ain’t gonna get stuck here all day, ’cause
the bitch who’s supposed to sub for me at noon says she just got a sudden ‘big’ customer and will be on her back, so to speak,
for hours.”

“Thanks,” Stone said, heading out. “And feed that damn dog, or the walls will start going too.” She clicked her lips, as if
the animal were becoming the disgrace of whore tow but went quickly into the kitchen where a Chinese chef began throwing horse
steaks on the griddle, heavy on the soy sauce.

Stone walked outside, the glare of the day not sending quite as jarring a shock into his eyes as it had yesterday. He could
see right away what she meant. It was a real celebration. Banners were up, hanging across the street from sagging window to
falling frame. Vendors were already out selling their crow pies, their snake burgers, their tripe soup.… The entire main street,
nearly twelve blocks long, had been barred to all traffic—motorcycles, mules, horses—and crowds of people who had come down
from the surrounding wilds were already filling the streets. After all, it was all that was left of the old America, of days
when there had been hope.

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 it 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.