Free The Damn Disciples by Craig Sargent Page A

into blood and mush as the tubular plant thing bit down. It swallowed down the
     twitching creature, all five pounds of it, in two quick bites. Stone could see the shape of the minimonster wriggling within
     even as it slid down the tubular stem and into the digestive fluids at the base of the thing.
    Carnivorous plants. Stone had read about them. Even seen pictures of them in books. But none of them had looked like these.
     There had never been anything like these before, he was sure of that. Doubtless a scientist would have been ecstatic to witness
     the disgusting scene. And would have won the Nobel Prize, if there were such things anymore. But Stone was just disgusted,
     nauseated to the core of his soul. They were alien. Not meant for life here.
    Stone had no choice. It was either go down the interstate, which slid right between the two giants, or waste many hours going
     all the way around the wastelands behind them. And for all he knew, it could be worse out there.
    “Okay, dog, pull down your radioactive-proof eye flaps or whatever the hell you’ve got, ’cause we’re going through some hot
     roadway.” Stone wrapped a scarf around his mouth and zippered up the black motorcycle jacket he had taken from the bunker.
     He eased the bike down the road—and saw with growing honor that the living crater was absolutely covered with the tubular
     worm things. And every ugly one of them was turning toward Stone and the bike like little radar domes, searching out just
     what the intruder was—and whether it was edible.
    They were even uglier up close. Much, much uglier. For they were the color of blood, with veins running all over them, extending
     right down into the glowing black soil. They were rooted into the very radioactive crust of the crater. Yet somehow it had
     given them life, nurtured them, made them grow with wild abandon. They were constantly moving, twisting, reaching around with
     their damned eyeless, overtoothed tubes snapping out at anything that came close—sometimes each other. Then snapping their
     jaws shut with reflexive action and biting and chewing at whatever was there.
    And he saw even more little things as he came right between the two craters. Other little mutant creatures rushing between
     the roots of the meateaters. They looked as nasty as the tubes—armored, covered with scales, horns, and bands of orange and
     red color that told all the world they were poisonous as shit to bite into. The whole fucking slope was alive with the ugly,
     the diseased, the mutated. Stone prayed with all he had inside that this wasn’t where the new world was heading. That it wasn’t
     him and his kind that were obsolete. That this one mountain was an aberration, a fluke that would die out and would never
     be repeated elsewhere.
    But if it was dying out, it sure as hell seemed healthy enough around here. The tubes, some of them ten, even twelve feet
     long, snapped out at the bike, which passed just inches from their reach. One of them stretched out and almost nicked Stone.
     Excaliber’s jaws flew up in a snap, and with a single bite he severed the head of the thing, churning jaws and all, and spat
     it out leaving the headless tube jerking around in the dust. They had almost gotten clear of the reaching jungle of teeth
     when Stone heard a roar off to the side. The sound was something between what a lion might emit on a horny jungle night and
     the trumpet a rogue elephant makes telling all the world to watch out.
    Then Stone saw it, and he knew why the beast was so arrogant. It was the mutant to end mutants. The creature stood ahead of
     them in the road, directly in their way. Stone’s jaw hung on in amazement as he stared at the thing. It was big. At least
     three or four times as big as Excaliber, 300 to 350 pounds. But it was its appearance that was mind-boggling. If Dr. Frankenstein
     took a warthog, a mastiff, and a mountain lion and got about equal portions of each cut off, then sewed them