Cannibal Corpse, M/C

Chapter Eleven

Three days later, they were ready.

Although Brightman was an asshole and the bikers had absolutely zero respect for guys like him, they had to give him one thing: he got things done. Everything they wanted, they got. If it wasn’t on base, and most of the things they asked for weren’t, Brightman had it flown in—weapons, gear, and motorcycles. Slaughter’s hardtail was ready and waiting for him, but the other six had no scoots. Brightman had fixed that. A variety of bikes were flown in (“liberated” from the Outlaws clubhouse in Milwaukee, apparently). Apache Dan found himself a chromed-out FXR that he fell in love with, Shanks and Fish both chose black ice Screaming Eagle Road Kings, Jumbo grabbed a custom ‘54 Panhead, and once Irish sat in the saddle of a sweet green flame Softail lowrider, you couldn’t get him off it. It was a serious improvement over the variety of ugly, patchwork, Frankensteinian ratbikes he’d thrown together over the years.

There was one bike that nobody touched because they knew it would be Moondog’s: a Boss Hoss 375 Horse with a deadly 100-HP nitrous boost. It was ceramic black with a red spider on the gas tank, a road monster with so much meat that nobody but Moondog wanted to tangle with that lady.

“That’s her,” he said when he saw it. “That’s the Widow.”

Brightman also got them an olive drab school bus to stow their supplies, bikes, extra fuel, and to take cover when needed. It was customized with a fold-down ramp in the back to run their bikes up, bunks for the boys, and a radio with which Slaughter would contact Brightman when he made the grab of the bio. Anytime a club went on a road ride for any distance, they brought along a chase vehicle like the bus. But under Moondog’s precise instructions it was more than a chase vehicle, it was a War Wagon riveted with ¾” steel plating cut with narrow gunports and impact-resistant black one-way plexiglass for the windshield. Neither the steel plating nor the plexiglass would stop a heavy round like a .50 caliber, but would give them protection against 9mm and the like. He also had a V-shaped cow-catcher made out of scrap metal and rebar welded to the front end.

“It’ll come in handy,” he said, “in case we have to plow through wrecks or anything.”

Once the bikes were dialed in, they leathered up, got into formation and Moondog said, “Keep the dirty side down and watch your asses.”

Then they throttled up, hungry for pavement.

The Army base was roughly an hour from the Minnesota border, so within sixty minutes, the Disciples crossed into the land of the buffalo… and the undead.

They rode into the wind, high and tight, Slaughter out front as chapter president with Apache Dan at his side as road captain. Next came Shanks and Irish and Jumbo. Moondog was the sweep, the backdoor. As warlord and probably the best rider outside of Slaughter himself, he needed a clear view of the entire column so he could see any trouble long before it happened. Fish trailed in the War Wagon. They all carried walkie-talkies so they could remain in contact with the Wagon.

The pack took the road on their iron horses mile by mile with a collective thunder of six purring hogs and other than a few wrecks, there was nothing to get in their way. Not like the old days when you had citizens in their General Motors cages clogging up all that free space. Slaughter only wished it was the old days when they took to the road with thirty or forty bikes and made a deafening roar, an army of hardriders, invincible, hell-bent and horny, looking for a fight, a rumble, a bare knuckle contest to keep their edge, pussy and booze, fast times and stoned nights.

Those were the days.

But even with some of that maudlin bullshit softening his brain, nothing could take away how he felt to be riding with his brothers and nothing could take from them the thrill, the charge, the brotherhood of being together and not just for a road ride or a field event, some three-day orgy of booze and broads and blood, but a mission, a barbarian campaign. Nothing got their hearts pounding and the red stuff in their veins burning hotter then the idea of an engagement, and this little party was going to be the end-all.

You’re going to lose these boys and you know it, Slaughter thought to himself as the wind blew into his face and his mirrored sunglasses showed him a world that was plucked and pitted like an old rack of bones. Either all of them or most of them. You’ll lose them or they’ll lose you. No way you’re getting out of this pissing contest intact. It’s gonna be dark. It’s gonna be ugly.

“And it’s gonna be the best time these machineheads have had in many years,” he said under his breath.

So like a knife drawn from gut to sternum, they cut north through the desolation of Minnesota, jumping off the I and onto 10 which would take them northwest across the state line and to Fargo, and into the darkest bowels of the Dakotas where the shit would get deep and dangerous. In St. Cloud, which looked to Slaughter like the set from some post-apocalyptic movie with its shattered buildings, burned-out neighborhoods, and skeletons sitting in cars, they crossed the Mississippi and it looked pretty much the same on the other bank, not a single WELCOME TO THE DEADLANDS sign to be had. Though, interestingly, someone had taken some articulated skeletons and withered brown cadavers that were almost skeletons and rigged them up on crossbars like scarecrows. There were several dozen of them. Along with a few crudely-painted skull-and-crossbone signs, this was the warning to the curious.

The only warning there would be.

As they passed out of St. Cloud they saw the dead wandering about through the ruins. Some of them stood around as the pack went by, more curious than anything.

About ten miles outside of the city they came upon a roadhouse with the amusing title of ‘The Royal Head’. Parked outside were about a dozen bikes, most of them rusty and spattered with mud. Slaughter got on the box and told Fish to pull over at the bend in the road.

“Could be Cannibal Corpse,” he told Moondog, who agreed. “Let’s go kick ass or get our asses kicked. A good dust-up will get the boys feeling like men again.”

“Sure as shit.”

There weren’t too many questions as Moondog passed out the pistol-gripped sawed-off 12-gauge pumps. They took the weapons happily.

“We go in quiet,” Moondog informed them, clipping a pair of white phosphorus grenades to his leather club vest. “Then we kill anything we find.”

The Disciples grinned.

“I’m smelling me some shiteaters,” Fish said, which was one of the many derogatory names the Disciples had for members of Cannibal Corpse.

“Let’s light this shit up then,” Apache Dan said.

Slaughter led the way through the stunted trees and across the gravel lot, his boys spread out behind him like commandos. There was absolutely no activity in or around the joint, just that hazy blue sky with the sun burning down like a hot yellow coin.

Slaughter motioned for the others to hang back as he went up to the door and tried it. It was open. He gave the Disciples the signal and they crept forward, tensing with anticipation to a man.

“We come across Coffin or Reptile, remember: those pricks are mine and mine alone,” he whispered to the others and they understood perfectly. It would have been a boon if any of them bagged Reptile or Coffin, but Slaughter wanted those two just a little bit more. The way he looked at it, the three Disciples they wasted had been done so on his watch.

He opened the door a crack and listened for activity.

There was nothing.

Either the place was empty, there was an ambush waiting, or the Disciples had caught the owners of those bikes with their pants down. He opened it a bit more and a gassy stink of putrefaction came out. Nothing new there, but it gave him ideas.

“All right,” he told Moondog. “Follow me in.”

Moondog gave him a look that plainly said he didn’t like it, that they didn’t know what they were stepping in here. That he, as warlord and sergeant-at-arms, advised a little reconnoitering first—there could be fifty wormboys out back for all they knew.

But Slaughter shook his head. The look in his eyes said all the warlord needed to know: These boys have been in-stir too long, man, they need to learn how to fight as one again, as a club.

“Let’s go,” Slaughter told him.

Even with their boots on they were quiet as they moved through the barroom, stepping quietly on the plank floors. Inside, it was a mess… wreckage and trash scattered everywhere. And bones. They were strewn about, heaped in the corners. Human bones that were gnawed and scraped, smashed and broken open for their marrow. The stink of death was strong, but it didn’t come from the remains. Instead, it emanated from the forms lying about like it was siesta time: six dead ones sprawled on the bar top, on the floor, under tables.

And as Slaughter looked at them—faces like seamed leather masks missing eyes and noses, lips shriveled back to reveal jutting teeth—he had to wonder, and not for the first time, if they went dormant like this because they needed to or if it was the worms that needed some down time. No matter. A few were face-down and they wore the colors of Cannibal Corpse.

“Shiteaters, alright,” Jumbo said.

“Do ‘em,” Slaughter said.

Under Moondog’s direction it was carried out calmly, efficiently, and slowly. They each chose a wormboy and put the barrels of their shotguns to the heads of the zombies. It was unbelievably simple and that’s why Slaughter knew it was going to go to shit, and right about the time the Disciples pulled their respective triggers and sent the deadheads back to hell, it hit the fan.

The door behind the bar flew open and at least ten wormboys came charging out. And what a sight they were. Their faces were raging liquiform epidemics of leprous rot… mucid, dripping, fluids oozing from ulcerous sores. Eyes like rotten eggs spilling tears of slime, mouths filled with undulant worm follicles. They came shambling and stumbling, creeping forth to engulf the intruders.

Slaughter was expecting it.

When they came out, he brought up his 12-gauge pump and took out the first Cannibal Corpse with close-range scattershot that blew the zombie’s head apart into a kaleidoscopic eruption of pink, red, black, and gray ribbons that splashed against the others and sprayed the walls in a dripping meat Rorschach blot.

The other Cannibals went right over the top of the flopping husk and Slaughter didn’t have to tell his boys to wade in.

Moondog reacted first.

As one of the wormboys reached for him, he smashed the barrel of his shotgun into its head and kicked it swiftly in the sternum, knocking it aside and giving him the time to blow the face off another pitted skull and get a glancing shot into the advancing horde before three of them crested over him like a rogue wave and he went down fighting with them.

Slaughter ran at them firing and working the pump on his gun.

Apache Dan and Shanks both got off a couple rounds but a really big Cannibal—a real wagonload of crawling carrion—got hold of Irish and lifted him up like he was stuffed with pillow down and threw him at the wall ten feet away. And maybe threw is not nearly descriptive enough, because Irish was fucking launched like cannonshot, going right over the top of the bar and crashing into a Budweiser mirror and coming down in an explosion of glass as his descent upset about a dozen dusty bottles of hootch.

Jumbo, who was about the size of an Abrams tank, grabbed a downed and quite overanxious Cannibal Corpse with a face like a ball of suet by the ankles and proceeded to use him as a bat, swinging him from side to side and sweeping wormboys out of his path so he could get to Irish before the zombies could. When he cleared the way, he swung around again and again like a man throwing a discus and let fly his wormboy right through the window, taking out the neon Leinenkugel’s sign in the process.

Not wanting to fire buckshot with the Disciples so close at hand, Slaughter used the pistol grip of his weapon like a club, battering it into the face of a Cannibal until he went down, then ducking just in time as another deadhead swung a femur at his head. Slaughter moved in and hammered the zombie in the ribs with his left fist until he felt something give in there. Then he darted back, pulled the Kukri from its sheath and started slashing and hacking like a man felling sugarcane. He took off arms, a head, opened two bellies, then brought the blade down overhead, bisecting a Cannibal’s head from cranium to chin like a fork of white-hot lightning splitting a dead oak.

By then Moondog was on his feet and he and another Cannibal Corpse were facing each other, both sprayed with gore and decay, swinging, hitting and getting hit, and it was an old-style bare-fisted punch-up as they kept hammering each other. After they both took six or seven good shots each, Moondog jumped up and brought the cleats of his boot down on the wormboy’s knee and there was a wet snap clear as a pistol shot. The wormboy screamed out in rage and Moondog took him by his greasy hair and slid the blade of his black anodized K-Bar fighting knife under his ear and into his brainpan. The wormboy went over dead as a stump. It was an old Marine Raider quick-kill technique from World War II and it still did the job just fine.

While Moondog was so engaged and Jumbo fought viciously to keep the zombies from lunching on the downed Irish, and Shanks tangled with a pair of Cannibals, both Slaughter and Apache grabbed up shotguns from the floor and walked around, dropping the dead men until their guns were empty.

Then there was silence.

The air was thick with burnt cordite, gunsmoke, and the mist of rot that rose from the dead at the feet of the Disciples.

Irish rose up from behind the bar like a ghost, shards of glass falling from him. He had a bottle of Jack Daniels Old No. 7 by the neck. Eyes rolling, face gashed and bleeding, he said, “Rock and roll, my brothers.” And promptly went down again.

Jumbo scooped him up and Moondog led them out into the fresh air.

Slaughter and Apache Dan remained behind, stepping around over a carpet of tissue, blood, maggots, and seeking worms.

“That was the shit,” Slaughter said.

“We’re lucky we pulled that one off,” Apache Dan said, squeezing blood from his long black ponytail. “Had to be twenty of those muthas, John. We better not go diving into a scene like that again or we’re going to come up short.”

“You’re right,” Slaughter told him, “and I knew it going in there. So did Moondog. But these boys needed some seasoning and there’s only one way to get that, brother.”

“I’m just advising caution. This shit is for keeps.”

Slaughter clapped him on the shoulder and led him outside where Shanks had just taken the head off the Cannibal Corpse that Jumbo threw out the window. He tossed the head into the gravel lot where it rolled. “Sheeeeeeit,” he said.

The others were smoking and laughing, enjoying the buzz of the after-action, with the exception of Moondog, who was off securing the perimeter as he always did. They were bloody and dirty, cut and bruised. And as far as Slaughter was concerned, they were ready now.

Fish was telling a story, and as usual it involved sex.

“…so we’re drinking at this bar up north in the boonies, checking out this three-day festival in Eerie, Penn. All the old bands are up there—Molly Hatchet, Foghat, even Mountain.” Fish went on, “Must’ve been… what? Fifteen years ago. Yeah, at least. So I’m up there with Charley Sweet and Creep—God rest their souls, man—and we’re at this bar getting pissed, just juiced and sloppy, right? Creep… oh, old Creep… never had any respect for his dick. He got his eye on this Indian bitch hanging around the bar. Don’t look like much to me—real dark, long hair, kinda chunky. Doesn’t do shit for me, that one.

“But Creep? Hell, he’s in love. You remember Creep, motherfucker always had an eye for the ladies. If they had a hole at the bottom, they were his type. So pretty soon him and this squaw are hitting it off. Charlie and me just shrug, right? Whatever gives him wood, that’s his business. Maybe an hour before last call, Creep and his Squaw, both pissed to the gills, disappear. Next day—it’s not even noon—Creep’s at the bar throwing back hooks of Wild Turkey, just staring off into space. He keeps shivering all the time, you know, like something’s crawling on his skin. ‘You nail that stuff?’ Charlie asks him. Creep just nods. ‘Any good?’ Charlie asks. Creep, he turns to us… and that look on his face! Shit! Like maybe he’d just eaten a turd sandwich. That bad. ‘Yeah,’ Creep says, ‘we were all over each other last night. Did it in the dark. Fucked like hogs, we did. I wake up this morning next to her and that’s when I realize this pig ain’t even an Indian.’ Charlie looks at me. We both look at Creep. ‘Not an Indian? She was dark like one,’ I say. ‘Sure she was,’ Creep says. ‘Except I wake up this morning and I see her in the light. I mean, I really see her in the light. That’s when I see she ain’t no fucking Indian, man, just a filthy white woman, dirty black. In fact, only clean spots on her were her tits, twat, and lips.’ Creep, he excused himself then. Had to go puke again, you see.”

“Bullshit,” Shanks said while the others laughed.

“Happened just the way I said it,” Fish told them, laughing. “Some time, I’ll tell you about that hooker with the three tits.”

Jumbo was holding up Irish, who was coming around pretty good by then. “I’m okay, my brother, I’m okay. I was just getting warmed up in there. Just getting my sea legs,” he said, taking two steps and going down again. Jumbo scooped him up like his bride. Irish stroked his bald head. “You’re beautiful, man.”

“Put him in the Wagon,” Moondog told Jumbo.

They went back to the War Wagon and their bikes and nobody even mentioned cutting the patches off the Cannibal Corpse members. When they got Irish in the Wagon along with his bike, and after Jumbo had attended to their wounds and his own, Apache Dan, as road captain, told Shanks he was chase, which gave Fish a little time to get out in the wind on his scoot.

“Shit,” Shanks said.

“We’re going to each take our turn on chase,” Slaughter said so everyone could hear it.

Once they had the Wagon secured, they kicked their bikes over and formed up. “Let’s do it,” Slaughter said and off they went, into the wind, into the day, cutting deeper into the Deadlands to whatever came next.