The Damn Disciples Read Online Free PDF Page A

straw. And this was one that wasn’t so cute. Something
     had gone wrong. He had been seeing more of them now. Mutations. The radiation left by the bombs that had been dropped five
     years before—the reason he and his family had been rushed to the shelter by his father. Radiation damage sometimes took a
     generation—even two—before it made itself fully felt. They had learned that at Hiroshima. And the twisted scaly thing, with
     a face like a little demon that hissed up at him, definitely had its genes twisted around some way. It sure as hell wasn’t
     a normal chick. But he suddenly had a hell of a lot more to worry about than the future of the eagle species. He heard a flap
     of wings, a loud cawing sound, and then a shadow covered his entire body. Stone turned, startled, wondering what the hell
     could be shadowing him 11,000 feet up. The fucking mother. She was huge—and mean. The great curved beak came snapping at him
     and Stone was barely able to duck out of the way as the jaws slashed at his face. He threw the hook up and mercifully caught
     it on the first try, pulling himself without even testing it.
    The eagle’s talons came slashing at his back as the bird thought he was reaching farther into the nest. Stone raised himself,
     his arms moving like little steam pistons as they pulled him quickly into the sky. The talons of the enraged bird slashed
     down the back of his jacket, which fortunately for Stone was a thick leather biker jacket that he had snatched from a dead
     soul who didn’t need it anymore. And even that, thick enough to take rolls from a bike at sixty miles per hour, began turning
     to tatters from the eagles’ relentless blurred assault.
    Now that Stone was above the nest and not any immediate threat to it, the bird suddenly halted its attack. The great golden
     and white feathered carnivore hovered above the hatchlings flapping its yard-wide wings and counting them with its crystal
     eyes—even the scaly one, which it didn’t quite know what to make of yet but was going to raise along with the other three.
     They were unharmed. Its trained eye detected no wounds, no red along the puffy white down. The creature on the mountainside
     hadn’t had a chance to eat them. The eagle cawed twice to the chicks, which set them hopping about and opening and closing
     their mouths like waste-disposal units set on fast.
    The bird swung its wide wings together and took off right up the side of the mountain so that within a second it was just
     behind Stone’s head again and looking hard at what the struggling human’s plans were.
    “Fuck off bird, will you!” Stone screamed out, his voice bouncing off the jagged mica-flecked rocks that scraped at his chest
     and face as he pulled himself up. “I’m gone, I’m history. Go give some fucking upchuck to juniors down there, okay?” He reached
     the anchor spot and ripped the hooks out without even daring to turn his head around. He could sense that the bird was just
     inches behind him, could feel it as the flapping wings blew a strong breeze over him, ruffling his hair as if he were in a
     storm.
    But the eagle, though it cawed at him with little stinging messages to get the hell out of there, and clawed at the air just
     a yard or so behind him to show what it could do if it wanted to, seemed content to let Stone go. Which was fine with Stone.
     The bird could have the whole fucking mountainside. If he ever made it to the top, he’d never even
look
at the hellish slope again. But the adrenaline that surged through his system from the attack gave him gently of energy to
     climb the remaining three hundred feet. It took only an hour and a half. Which was pretty amazing for a one legged man.

THREE
    It took only a few more minutes for Stone to reach the slope into which the bunker had been built. The major had spared no
     expense when it came to protecting his family. As the head of one of the country’s most successful munitions and military