James Axler – Stoneface

Suddenly a naked woman sprang into the space between the people and the platform, her long hair flying loose. Red and blue paint adorned her bare arms and legs. She brandished a fourteen-inch-long bowie knife over her head, and she exuded an erotic energy, a dangerous sensuality. With a start, Ryan recognized the woman as Fleur.

Bounding to the dais, Fleur straddled Zadfrak’s body and shouted, “When you get to the bottom, you go back to the top of the slide!”

All the people shouted those words back. “When you get to the bottom, you go back to the top of the slide!”

Fleur began to slash Zadfrak’s bound body with her blade. Hellstrom beat the drum faster and faster, louder and louder, and Fleur matched that frenzied rhythm with wild slices. Blood sprayed up, splashing her nude body, spattering in an artless pattern across her breasts.

Mildred made a gagging sound, but she didn’t avert her gaze.

Fleur suddenly sagged against the rail of the platform, quivering and panting in exhaustion.

The crowd surged forward with a mad howl. “You may be a lover, but you ain’t no dancer!”

Knives appeared in every hand, and they converged around the dais. Blades slashed and sliced, but Ryan noted that he saw no stabbing motions.

Hellstrom maintained the steady, fast drumbeat, then in stages he began to slow it. As he did, the throng began to wander away. By the time the drumming was a maddeningly slow bom bom bom , the red ruin of a human being lay on the litter.

Fleur, still breathing hard, untied the rope from the rail and knotted it around the top cross section of the litter. A man who was completely naked except for a hooded mask made from a huge wolf’s head leaped to the dais and began hauling on the rope, hand over hand.

The litter and Zadfrak’s mutilated body swung up and free of the platform, inching toward the top of the pyramid. At one point, the lupine mask slipped, and Ryan recognized the scarred face of Dog beneath it.

At the same time, men with torches scurried about the base of the pyramid, igniting the tinder. Several more men, carrying metal tanks with hoses and nozzles attached, squirted sprays of liquid onto the packed flammables.

Jak’s nostrils twitched. “Gasoline. High-grade. Smell like predark stuff.”

In almost all regions of Deathlands, predark gasoline was worth as much, if not more, than gold. To use it as an accelerant when alternatives were available meant one of two thingseither the citizens of Helskel were unpardonably wasteful, or they had an almost unlimited supply.

By the time Zadfrak’s body had been winched to the apex of the pyramid, the tinder had caught and flames were roaring upward through the fuel. They could feel the heat on their faces.

Zadfrak’s body dangled there, held by the strength of Dog’s brawny arms. When flames were licking at his blood-dripping feet, Dog released his grip.

The rope hummed through the pulley, and Zadfrak plunged into the pyramid of sheeting flame. An agonized scream floated over the roar of the pyre, the cheers of the crowd.

Mildred put her hands to her face, eyes blank with shock. “He’s still alive.”

Zadfrak’s bound body went crashing through the burning wood, coal and sagebrush. A whirling column of fiery sparks and embers corkscrewed up into the black sky. A breeze blew the sweetish stench of roasting human flesh in their direction.

Ryan followed the spinning, glowing motes. Despite his best efforts not to, he visualized what was happening to Zadfrak his skin would blister and peel, his organs would burst and his bodily fluids would boil and evaporate. The bones would be reduced to a gritty ash within a few seconds. He hoped the man had lost consciousness quickly.

Dropping his gaze to the dais, he saw that Hellstrom was still seated, tapping his long fingers on the drum skin. He was smiling, and he seemed to be staring past the throng to the ridge top hiding Ryan and his people.

Cold fear stole over the one-eyed man. Taking Krysty by the arm, he backed down the slope. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”