Cannibal Corpse, M/C

Chapter Two

Slaughter’s scoot was a stripped-down, night-black Harley FLHTC with a hardtail frame, straight drag pipes, and a high compression ironhead stroker. She was loud as hell and could be heard rumbling a mile away, but she was fast and maneuverable, and when you were in her saddle, she had plenty of meat.

He shot down the I just outside Black River Falls, rode the clutch, and cut onto the county trunk which was more gravel than pavement, potholed and rough. It cut through the green hills of western Wisconsin and sometimes, when you were high enough, you could see Minnesota out there to the west, hilly and mist-choked like some fairy tale never-never land. In Slaughter’s mind, it was beginning to take on that kind of mythic quality: it was west, west into the Deadlands and that’s where he wanted to go and where it would happen… whatever it was.

Back roads like this… open fields, clustered thickets, deep-cut ravines… it reminded him of the old days when he was chapter president of the Pittsburgh Devil’s Disciples and he took the pack out on a road run.

He was thinking about Dirty Mary.

If he went west, she’d want to tag along because that’s the kind of girl she was. She was a veteran biker bitch for sure, a long-time club lady, fast with her mouth, good with a knife, slick and mean. But under all that she was weak. She was terrified of being alone. Slaughter figured that if he was going, he’d have to ditch her in the middle of the night. He knew Dirty Mary didn’t love him any more than he loved her. They were in it together for bonding, for protection, for sex. That’s how it worked. You stripped that away and they were barely friends. The first time he hooked up with her outside Milwaukee, she’d tried to put a knife into him.

It was that kind of relationship.

The sex was good—rough, raw, violent—but that’s all there was. Slaughter scavenged for food and Dirty Mary cooked it up, he protected her and she took care of him. They got it on, but they could barely stand to be in the same room together. She liked to tell him he wasn’t as smart as Jibb, her last old man, a sergeant-at-arms for the Warlocks out of Florida, and he liked to tell her she couldn’t cook or give head like Joseline could, his ex who had died back in Scranton.

Fun, fun, fun.

There was a diabolic chemistry between them and he could feel it bubbling in him like acid whenever they were together and not slapping skin. Like belladonna and mandrake root mixed, real poison, venom seething and hissing and looking for lives to take. And it was going to happen. Sooner or later, that evil temper of Mary’s was going to piss him off and he was going to hurt her or she was going to slit his throat while he slept.

Blood was most definitely in the offing.

He rumbled up a tree-lined hill, waiting for a break in the foliage because when it opened he could see the farm down there in the hollow and he would breathe easier. He always breathed easier when he saw it. Like home sweet home, dig it, made him feel relaxed. That was, until he got in the door and Mary and he started going at it, dosing each other on hate and circling one another like mad dogs.

Jesus.

Slaughter shook his head. What kind of fucking life is that? What kind of shit is that to be—

What the hell?

He was grannying the hog in low gear, moving slow and easy, when the trees parted and the bushes squatted down and he could see little home sweet home down there. Barn, silo, farmhouse, all knitted up in yellow late-summer fields like a shawl.

He brought the hog to a stop, then rolled it beneath the overhanging branches of a big oak. He hopped off and peered down into the hollow. There were two pick-up trucks parked down there, and when he’d left three hours before to eat some road there had been no trucks of any sort. So either Dirty Mary had made some new friends—Slaughter found that hard to believe—or she was in a spot.

He figured the latter.

He went back to his bike and loaded the Combat Mag, slid it in the Army web belt holster, and strapped it on. He scanned the farmyard below, figuring how he was going to do this. He should have been scared and he knew it. But with the life he’d led and how goddamned pent-up and bored he’d been for weeks now, this was escape. This was a kick. This was getting into the shit and getting in deep.

He moved down the hillside smoothly, going down into a crouch and crab-crawling his way through the yellow grass of the orchard until he got amongst the old crabapple trees and got himself some camo. He waited a few moments to see if anyone was on the watch for him.

Nothing.

“All right,” he said under his breath. “Let’s light this shit up.”

Crouching again, he moved from cover to the silo, stepping easy to the barn and waiting, his heart thumping in his throat. But it wasn’t fear. It was exhilaration. It was excitement. Man, it was like the old days creeping up on a Cannibal Corpse clubhouse to throw some lead around and bust some heads.

He edged around the barn, smelling the pure Wisconsin air. Sweet and fresh. You had to love it. There. He saw a guy standing out near the back door having a smoke. Just a kid. He was dressed in Army-issue camo fatigues which marked him either as a member of the Red Hand of Freedom, a paramilitary terrorist sect that had splintered from the regular Army during the Outbreak, or just some dipshit hanging with another G.I. Joe combo.

Didn’t much matter; Slaughter was going to take him out.

Kid just stood there, leaning up against the wall. He had a rifle with him, looked like an old M-1. Like him, it was just leaning there. Kid wasn’t much of a sentry and Slaughter figured he hadn’t trained down in Fort Bragg.

Slaughter moved around his blindside and slipped up behind him and it was so fucking easy he thought for one moment maybe it was a trap and the kid was laid out as bait. The kid just kept smoking, not a care in the world. He made a slight grunting noise when Slaughter quickly took him by the hair, yanked his head back and put the SS dagger against his carotid.

“Move and I slit your throat,” he told him.

The kid didn’t move other than the shaking that went through his limbs. Slaughter slid the knife against his Adam’s apple, wondering if he should just do him or get some intel from him. He decided on the latter. Kid couldn’t have been more than nineteen, just a cherry. He had green eyes like a crystal deep pond. Naïve. Innocent. Slaughter figured if it hadn’t been for the Outbreak, kid would probably have been the high school track star with those long legs of his. But fate had changed all that. No track, no school, no copping a feel down Mary Jane’s pants in the back of his Camaro.

Every time he made to open his mouth, Slaughter pressed the knife up a little tighter.

“C’mon… man,” the kid finally breathed, “don’t kill me… please don’t kill me.”

“Tell me what happened here.”

“I don’t know… ah…”

Slaughter pressed the dagger in until it tasted blood, just piercing the skin of the kid’s throat.

“You get one more chance.”

“We… we came down the road, pulled in here and this crazy bitch started shooting at us, screaming names at us.”

Slaughter smiled. Yeah, that was Dirty Mary, all right.

“Who are we?”

“Red Hand, man. If you’re smart you’ll just let me go and get out of here. There’s some pretty bad dudes in that house.”

“Ratbags,” Slaughter said, which was the general term for members of the Red Hand of Freedom.

The kid scowled.

“They having their fun with the woman?”

“No… not yet. But I think they’re going to take her with.”

“No shit?”

“Like I said, man… we’re the Hand, we’re fucking Red Hand. You don’t wanna fuck with us.”

“Who’s your leader? What’s the puke’s name?”

“Snake,” the kid said. “They call him Snake.”

Slaughter considered it. “How many?”

“Five.”

“Six with you.”

“Sure.”

Slaughter already had the kid figured for a screamer, but he decided out of the goodness of his black little heart that he was going to be compassionate today.

“Okay, kid. I’m going to let you live. When I take the knife away, you run. You run out into the field. You run up that hillside. You keep running and running and you never come back. That sound fair?”

“Sure.”

Slaughter sighed, pulled the knife away and right away the kid scrambled towards the door, calling, “Mike! Rich! He—”

But by then Slaughter had him and he slit his throat with one quick slash. The kid hit the dirt, gagging out blood and trembling in the grass. He didn’t tremble long.

Slaughter took his rifle and moved along the side of the house, he ducked under windows until he began to hear voices. They were in the living room and Dirty Mary was really giving it to them. Slaughter peeked through the corner of the window. She was in a chair. There was blood on her face like she’d been hit. The Ratbags were gathered around her, but not too close. Mary’s shirt was torn and one of her breasts was hanging out. Not that such a thing would bother her, he knew. She liked to flash them like a cop flashed his tin. She had a lot of stories about getting thrown out of bars for showing them around so people could appreciate the inking she had on them.

Yeah, she was some kind of girl.

The Ratbags were probably thinking on raping her, but they didn’t know Dirty Mary. She liked to hand it out like candy at Halloween, you didn’t have to take it by force. But if they did, if those sorry shits put the moves on her… man, were they in for something. In close, Dirty Mary was a real animal with her nails and teeth. And that wasn’t even counting the razor she kept in her belt.

Slaughter decided he’d let it play out a bit, see what happened.

He figured it would be good.