The Damn Disciples Read Free Page B

the smashup, and a whole slew of rats went flying off in bloody spirals as a pathway was cleared right through
     the living swarm.
    As Stone stumbled forward he could sense the rats coming and snapping at his boots, trying to climb up him. But Excaliber
     met them face to face, jaw to jaw, tooth to snapping tooth. Only, his were bigger, faster, and meaner. For as one would leap
     up toward the charging pair, the pit bull would catch it in midair like some mutt out in the backyard catching a hot dog fresh
     off the family grill. With a single snap the pit bull spat them out again, moving, never stopping. He took care of those that
     charged toward Stone’s legs as well, ripping them right off the Chow Boy’s pants as they tried to scamper up and get some
     fang into his flesh. In seconds the pit bull had disposed of a dozen, leaving their spurting corpses behind, which others
     of the pack stopped and began chewing on. A meal on the run was always a happy occurrence.
    Seeing that the dog was taking care of business down below, Stone turned his attention to their forward escape route, their
only
escape route. And it’d better be fast, he could see as he did a quick 180-degree scan without breaking his uneven half-run,
     for within twenty or thirty seconds the main bulk of the rat army would be upon them—and that, no matter how wildly they fought,
     would be that.
    He aimed the shotgun again, holding it down as low as he could, as if he were reaching for the ground, and pulled the trigger.
     The reason he had grabbed this particular blunderbuss over other, higher-quality, firepower was just for the autoeject and
     instant refire mode. It meant he could keep pulling at the damn thing with just one hand. The second shell sent out a hailstorm
     of pellets from the smoking muzzle. And another forty or so rats who thought they were about to be in culinary heaven were
     suddenly nothing more that flopping dead meat, their dark pelts saturated with red, their own brothers and sisters already
     chewing on their still-feeling flesh.
    Suddenly Stone sensed a shape coming up at him from the left and turned his head just in time to see the biggest goddamn rat
     he had ever laid eyes on—a good two feet plus—launch itself and come toward him, its jaws fully extended like something Cape
     Kennedy might have once launched to scare the shit out of the rest of the universe. Somehow Stone twisted his whole body and
     ripped the shotgun up trying to get a bead on the thing, which was closing in on his very eyeballs. He could count the whiskers
     on the ugly one-eyed face. He pulled the trigger and shifted the crutch around fast to stop himself from going down from the
     recoil.
    The rat took the full load of shot from a distance of two feet. The creature disintegrated in the air, like a balloon that
     had popped, a balloon filled with blood and slime that filled the air around Stone with a slick red spray that lingered like
     a mist. But he wasn’t counting the drops. Swinging the shotgun around, he let off two more blasts and then got to full, stumbling
     gallop in seconds. Another wave of little flesheaters went flying off like rag dolls painted red, and Stone and the dog waded
     right through and over the twitching bodies, nearly falling and slipping in the pools of wet fur, the puddles of hot blood.
    Still, for all the heroics and sound and fury, Stone knew they needed a miracle. As he scouted ahead, looking around desperately
     for he didn’t know what, he saw a chasm in the earth—a fissure, glacially created. It formed a long jagged crack in the earth
     a good six feet wide and nearly a quarter-mile long. If miracles were needed, this was looking like it might be in the right
     department. Excaliber saw it too, and he barked hard at Stone twice, signaling him to make sure the Chow Boy had seen it.
     The canine knew that the human could get a little fog-headed at times.
    Stone fired twice more and then, when he fired a third time,