Warlord's Revenge (20 page)

“Haven’t heard a thing,” Peaches said, drying her eyes with a perfumed handkerchief. The moment the excess moisture had been
wiped up, she pulled a little makeup tin from her omnipresent purse and began dabbing at it, slamming the thick powder onto
her cheeks, sending up a cloud of the stuff all around head so she half disappeared for a moment. “But you could try Main
Square—it’s the center of the mall—where the best, the most high-priced weapons and girls are. The Fifth Avenue, so to speak,
of the place. If they’re selling your sister as high-priced virgin meat, that’s for sure where they’d stash her. That’s the
only advice I can give you, sweetie pie. But be careful. If there is a trap being set for someone here in Keenesburg, it can
only be for you. If your sister is the bait, then they’ll be waiting, Stone. Waiting to cut you down. You’re luckier than
a prairie mouse that fell into a rattlesnake den that you’re even still alive. That dumb disguise of yours wouldn’t have lasted
another day here. Believe me. The lower-level assholes are just amoeba brains, but the upper echelons—the Scalzannis, his
brothers, the dons, all of them—they’re sharp as hawks. They see anything funny. They have their eyes on this place like you
wouldn’t believe. Even got video cameras on all the major mall corridors, sweeping back and forth in case anyone tries to
break through the windows and take anything.

“I’ll have to take my chances,” Stone said, finding that as he walked around the floor of the Howard Johnson’s circa 1960s
decorated room with pinups of naked girls from old
Penthouse
and
Playboy
magazines glued onto the walls, his legs seemed to grow a little steadier. “She’s my blood. All that’s left of it. If I don’t
save her, she’s dead meat.” He didn’t add that he also felt responsible for the death of his father and mother—and that if
April was taken, too, it would have been a bases-loaded home run in the kill-your-own-family department. In which case he
might as well join them. For the feelings that would have been created in him would have been unbearable.

“This way, then, Stone,” she said, taking him by the elbow in the same ironlike grip she had exhibited on the barroom floor.
She opened up the little door in the wall and started pulling on some of the ropes that dangled in front of her, like nooses
ready to be flung around necks. “They’d notice you if you tried to go back down the stairs. It’s slow back there tonight.
They was all joking about how dumb you looked as they carried you up here.” Stone leaned forward and looked down the long,
dark shaftway. It seemed that he was trusting his life to strangers more and more these days.

“Well, if I have to, then I guess I have to,” Stone said as he sat up on the ledge and wriggled his way in so that he was
sitting on top of the little wooden box once used to take away garbage, that had risen up to the third floor of the building
he was in.

“It’s not that far—just goes down four stories to the basement. Get out there and go through the corpse room—shouldn’t be
too busy—then right out to the street. Good luck, Stone. You’re sure as hell going to need it.”

“Thanks again for the ‘no ice pick’ policy,” Stone said with a half grin. Then he disappeared into the darkness. As he put
his full weight on the top of the dumbwaiter, it suddenly started shooting down faster than he had expected. By the time he
got his hands back around the thick, fraying ropes that held the thing, it had already fallen to the first floor. He grabbed
hard with both hands and nearly screamed as the rope ripped across his skin, instantly burning it red on both palms. The wooden
box came to a hard thump on the concrete floor of the basement, and Stone went flying out through the air into a bunch of
tables and chairs.

Don’t make noise, Stone thought to himself with a bitter mental laugh as he rolled to a stop amid a deafening clatter of tables
and chairs that were flying every which way. He rose to his feet, whipping out his Uzi, which he threw onto full auto and
gripped hard around the frame-only magna stock. He was in a long and fairly narrow room with concrete block walls and a single
dangling light bulb lighting the entire basement chamber, which was about eighty by ten feet. The tables he had knocked over
lay mixed with a half dozen chairs, and Stone saw two corpses by the flickering light—both with purple faces and severed spinal
cords waiting for the pit. He waited motionless, ready to kill, but no one showed up for the party. After about thirty seconds
he let out a deep sigh and realized he hadn’t breathed since he’d hit the floor. He was luckier than his ass deserved. Whoever
was supposed to be around here wasn’t anywhere in sight—or hearing distance. Off somewhere fucking or getting stoned. Thank
God for drugs and women, Stone thought as he started forward through a dark, narrow passageway. They had just saved his ass.

It was easy to get outside, as Stone didn’t find a single guard in the lower level. He came to a ramp and then was out on
a side street. He walked without the cap or glasses now but pulled the leather collar of his thickly lined field jacket up
around his neck to hide at least part of his lower face. It was late now, even for the mall—four-thirty in the morning—and
Stone only encountered stragglers here and there, staggering back to their rooms with whores under each arm, bottles in each
hand.

He made his way toward the center of the mall as Peaches had suggested, keeping a wary eye out for the surveillance cameras
that he saw posted here and there at major intersections of the larger corridors. Stone just had to pray that the scumbag
at the controls of the thing was asleep at the wheel, as most of these goons were. Then he came to what was obviously the
main thoroughfare. Here, the store windows were all gilded in fake gold, with real glass nearly an inch thick that rose up
high, framing its contents. Stone walked slowly along, looking deeply in each window. It was the crème de la crème of rifles
in the first few stores. Handcrafted and carved, with finished walnut stocks and stainless-steel parts. These were the collector’s
editions—available only to the top warlords, the deacons in the church of crime.

After several blocks the windows were filled with girls again. But these weren’t whores, used up and scarred like a canyon.
These were young, rosy-faced teens and young women just captured from the Styx, from wagon parties, from raiders, from all
over the region. The most desirable of the young beauties that were for sale in the mall. The ones that the richest of the
death dealers were after. The guns they bought, but it was the girls,—the sweet, young, angelic virgins—they craved, that
they bid against each other for, that they drove by cars and armored vehicles a thousand miles to visit the slave stores of
the Scalzanni Mall. Quality was quality, and though Scalzanni was one of the biggest sons of a bitches in the West, he delivered.
His reputation for carrying untouched, unblemished meat was unmatched.

Even now, in the dying hours of the night, Stone saw a pining figure here and there staring at some lovely thing who lay fast
asleep in the window, looking at her with wild, lusting eyes. Dreaming, dreaming. None of them paid Stone the slightest notice
as he walked by. Each of the girls was back-dropped by some mythical scene or other to add fantasy to the crude reality of
being imprisoned in a glass cage but a few feet wide, naked for thousands of drooling men to see. Behind one girl were crude
paintings of ancient Egypt. She had a necklace around her neck, attempting to approximate the Cleopatra look. Another display
had a Revolutionary War motif with George Washington crossing the Delaware. Its nude sixteen-year-old occupant wore only an
American flag around her groin, held there by but a single ready-to-snap thread. Yet another naked teen appeared to be in
the deep woods with a little leaf glued over each breast.

And so it went as Stone walked slowly down the length of the main corridor, where the “expensive goods” lay, glancing back
and forth from side to side as he passed each absurd display. He had nearly reached the very end when he glanced ahead at
a single cage that stood by itself, marking the very end of the long walkway. The glass cage was larger, the lighting brighter
on this one than on any of the others. And as Stone drew closer he could see that the scene painted on the back of the cage
was a mock Renaissance one—with storm clouds all around and angels flying down. And the girl—chained naked to a tree in this
tableau—was his sister.

Stone rushed forward, knowing he was losing his cool. But he couldn’t stand seeing her tied up like an animal, her uncovered
nakedness but for a small crown she wore on her head as if she were some medieval princess. He came right up to the glass
covering and pressed his face against it. She was so close—right on the other side—yet as if in another dimension. Her eyes
were closed tight, and Stone could see by her slow breathing and sallow complexion that they had drugged her. He hit against
the side of the glass with his fist, then harder, trying to wake her. Before he knew what he was doing, he was pounding against
the glass with both fists in a fury of rage and murderous intent against the bastards who had done this.

Suddenly her eyes seemed to tremble slightly, and they opened just a hair. The pupils within seemed to focus on Stone, and
suddenly the eyes opened almost halfway.

“Martin…” The lips formed silently, hardly moving. “Martin…” Then she seemed to fall back into a swoon, her head dropping
back to the side. Stone was beside himself with rage, wanting to reach her. He reached down and pulled out his Ruger 44 Mag
and stepped back. He knew somewhere inside himself that he probably shouldn’t be doing this, that as Peaches had said, they’d
be watching him. But he also knew that direct action is the only way to make things happen. And that you could sit around
for a million years and wonder about the consequences of things—or just do them.

Stone was for doing something now—and getting the hell out of there with her. Maybe it wouldn’t be that hard. Maybe. He aimed
the 44 at the very side of the glass where the two edges met, as far away from April as he could. Turning his own head and
shielding it with his other hand, Stone fired. Without looking to see what damage he had wrought, he raised the gun up a foot,
fired again, then up another foot or so for a final blast. He turned and saw that it had worked—at least partially. The thick
glass had shattered for yards in each direction but still hung together by invisible shatterproof threads within. Stone reached
forward and punched at it, making a hole so that he could reach inside and pull whole sections of the broken window out.

Within thirty seconds Stone had cleared out a space big enough to crawl through and scrambled inside. He jumped up and rushed
to April, who seemed to have fallen sound asleep again, even through the gun blasts. Stone pulled his Randall bowie knife
from its sheath at his side and reached out to cut the leather thongs that held her upright, tied to two posts. Before he
had even reached the first, there was a sudden hiss, and a yellow mist began pouring down from vents in the ceiling.

“Shit,” Stone screamed as he ripped up the Ruger and fired three quick shots into the ceiling. But he knew even as he did
so that it was a futile gesture. He couldn’t shoot gas out of the fucking air—or even hit those who controlled it. It was
only the pipes that released the quick-stun muscle gas so that it filled the glass box within seconds. Stone felt his mind
sinking again down into a field of pain, as if he was being buried under the dirt by a plowed blanket of asphyxiating mud.
The dirty air seemed to fill his lungs and his mouth. And then he was just a chunk of dirt himself, shouting but not being
heard from beneath the falling earth of his mind.

S
tone wondered if he was heading toward heaven or hell as he seemed to shoot down a long white tube of light that was all around
him as if he was a moth caught inside a flourescent tube. He’d been basically a good fellow—relatively speaking, that was.
Of course, he’d killed a number of men, but that had been since he left the bunker, and only when they tried to do him in
first. Yes, all things considered, he certainly was a candidate for cloudland. On the other hand, he had no illusions about
the entrance requirements. And though there was some good mixed in there in a few spots, realistically he was heading downstairs,
a concept that, even though he was dead, didn’t make him feel too good. Made his stomach crawl, in fact. Which made him wonder
even as he shot faster through the tunnel of pure whiteness how dead men and souls could have stomachs.

Then he was rocketing toward the end, which grew brighter and brighter, and suddenly he was in a sea of colors and voices
that blinded and deafened him instantly.

“He’s coming around, he’s coming around,” a godlike creature seemed to bellow, and Stone’s brainpan shook around like the
bells at Notre Dame. “The asshole is coming to.”

“Ah, how pleasant,” a second voice thundering in over the first. “And I was just thinking I was going to have to leave without
having any entertainment today. Mr. Stone, welcome to hell.”

Stone slowly opened his eyes a painful fraction of an inch at a time. So it was hell—he’d been demoted. Ah, well. He tried
to focus on the denizens of the subterranean world with a morbid curiosity as to just what the devil and his minions actually
looked like. But the face that sprang into view as he squinted in the light of numerous fluorescent lights overhead was worse
than what he had expected: Scalzanni cracking his knuckles and looking most pleased. The pointed rat face grinned down at
Stone, who realized as his consciousness slowly began seeping back into his battered brain that not only was he not in hell,
but that he was still alive and tied down flat on his back, hardly able to move an inch.

“My sister—” Stone began, suddenly remembering that she had been with him in his last seconds.

“Cool out, Stone,” the Mafia crime boss said with a razor-sharp grin. He walked around the hospital bed, stripped of everything
so that just a wide board was anchored to the frame, atop which Martin Stone lay naked, his hands and feet tied with unbreakable
cords. “She’s okay. Not that it’s any of your fucking concern. She’ll be marketed as one of my stable of virgins. She
is
, I hope.” He sneered at Stone. “Or were you renting her out yourself, and that’s why you came to get her back?” Scalzanni
laughed a wet, little slurping sound, and his black silk suit danced around him as if it were far too big for the emaciated
body that was hidden beneath it.