by Tim Curran
He was thinking about checking out. Just climbing back up the hill—with the kid’s food, of course—and jumping on his scoot, eating some road. It wasn’t like he was in love with Dirty Mary, and that crazy bitch would sell him down the road first chance she could if a better offer came along. That’s the sort of mama she was. But if he did that it would mean he would miss out on the entertainment when the Ratbags tried to bust a piece off her and he figured that was going to be real good.
So he stayed.
Maybe he stayed for Dirty Mary; maybe for the Ratbags in case they needed medical attention. Mostly he stayed for himself. He’d been looking for action for a long time and he wasn’t about to duck out on it now that he had it. Besides, he wasn’t much on running unless things got real itchy so he was going to stay and break a few heads, relieve some of that tension building in his chest.
Taking the kid’s ruck with him, he went around to the living room window so he could voyeur the fun in there. No internet or DVDs anymore, a man had to get his porn wherever he could. He almost laughed at that. That was good. That was funny.
He peered into the window.
Okay, now it was getting good.
Dirty Mary was playing games and those stupid fuckers didn’t even realize that they’d been baited and pulled into the spider’s web. By the time she started sucking the blood out of them it would be too late. But for the time being she was content on sucking something else. One of the Ratbags, maybe even that boy Snake, was standing there and Dirty Mary was on her knees in front of him, bobbing on him, showing him how good she was with her mouth. The other four were gathered around and a couple of them already had their flies unzipped in preparation for the fun to come. They were real gents because they’d even let Mary wipe the blood from her face. Real Christian gentlemen they were.
Mary was putting on a good show and the Ratbag she was blowing was off in la-la land, never knowing it could be that good. The others had forgotten their guns and that’s exactly what Mary wanted. She wasn’t stupid. Sex for her wasn’t like it was for most women. With Dirty Mary it was like a handshake; you sealed every deal with it. She could do more tricks with a good length of dick than a rodeo cowboy with a horsehair lariat.
And she’d be sealing their deals, all right.
Slaughter lit a cigarette, wishing he had some popcorn.
You could go in there and help her, he thought, but instantly dismissed the idea. Mary didn’t need help. She might even get pissed if he broke up the party. Let her have some fun. Already her free hand was sneaking around the back of her belt and going for that razor.
The Ratbags weren’t even aware of it.
Except maybe the short, Hispanic looking guy in the back. Maybe Mary wasn’t his kind of thing. Maybe he liked to drop his worm in a different sort of pond.
Here it comes, Slaughter thought.
Just about the time the guy Mary was working on was about to loosen his load, his eyes all glazed over, and his three compatriots were sweating with anticipation…Mary went in for the kill. She grabbed the guy’s sack and squeezed it to pulp just as she sank her teeth in his business like a shark chomping down on some good red meat.
The guy screamed.
Sure, it was bloody murder.
He knocked Mary aside and fell back, his dick nearly bitten in half, his hands trying to stem the flow of blood. Mary came out with that razor and sliced another guy that tried to take hold of her, laying his hands open and almost blinding still another.
But then they had her.
“Shit,” Slaughter said, crushing out his smoke. “She must be losing her touch.”
He went around front, kicked open the door, and stepped right in with the Combat Mag in his hand. It was a big, blue steel piece of death and they saw it. Saw how their own guns—three M16s and two hunting rifles—were not within easy reach.
“Who the fuck are you?” one of them said.
Dirty Mary had been beaten down now and the men had knives in their hands. What was coming for her next wouldn’t be pleasant. The dude she’d bitten was writhing on the floor, bleeding all over the damn place. He was not screaming now, but moaning and sobbing, and it was such a pathetic spectacle that Slaughter almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“Name’s Slaughter,” he said. “Mary? Get up.”
“Fuck took you so long, you prick?”
“Got here soon as I could.”
Dirty Mary’s brown eyes were simmering like hot molasses. She wiped blood from her lips with the back of her hand. “Oh, really? I bet you were standing outside looking in through the window, you goddamn asshole. It would be so like you to think this was all a joke. Think it was funny that these limp-dicks were raping me.”
“Didn’t look much like rape to me.”
“You asshole.”
“How’d that shit taste?” he asked her and when she made to come at him with more castration in mind, he waved the gun at her. He put the Mag back on the Ratbags. “Wait a minute…were you fine citizens raping this woman?”
The biggest of them, the guy who’d been next on the train, managed a smile that was thin as a paper cut. “We weren’t raping anyone. She volunteered.”
“THE FUCK I DID!” Dirty Mary shouted at him. “DON’T YOU BELIEVE THAT SHIT, SLAUGHTER! THEY FORCED ME!”
Slaughter nodded. “Sure. Now grab their guns, Mary.”
She did.
“Now throw them out the door. Eject the magazines and throw the bullets into the bushes.”
She did that, too.
“Now we can be civilized and talk business.” Slaughter smiled at them. “First off, who said you could mistreat my old lady?”
“Fuck are you talking about?”
“Her, I’m talking about her. You ain’t got no right to be doing that. If you would have been civil, I would have sold her to you. Maybe a carton of cigarettes or a bottle of good booze. I’m not a scalper.”
“Hey, fuck you, Slaughter,” Dirty Mary said, still making no attempt to cover up her breasts. “I’m not for sale.”
“You’re always for sale, woman.”
She glared at him. “I’ll kill you. I swear, I’ll fucking kill you.”
Slaughter believed her. That was one of the reasons he made her throw the guns out the door. There were things in life that didn’t go together real well like open flame and dynamite…or Dirty Mary and guns. You had to keep them apart in order to keep the body count low.
The Ratbags just watched him. What kind of game was this? Was he fucking with them? He wasn’t really going to sell them the woman, now was he?
They didn’t know Slaughter was all. They didn’t know the kind of shit a man like him was capable of. That he had once sold his old lady to another biker for a dollar and then bought her back for a pack of cigarettes. That’s the kind of guy he was.
Slaughter turned his attention to the bleeding man on the floor. “Your friend…that Snake?”
“How’d you know?”
“The kid out back told me.” Slaughter looked down at the dickless wonder groaning and moaning. “Sorry, Snake, but I think you’re gonna need a new name.”
With their leader so unfortunately incapacitated, the Ratbags just didn’t know what they should do. The biker and the woman were some kind of couple apparently. The biker had a gun and he looked plenty mean.
“How much will you give me for her?” he asked them.
Dirty Mary sneered at him. “You cheap sonofabitch—”
“Shut up,” Slaughter told her.
He smiled at the Ratbags and they were too stunned by what he was saying to do anything but stare. That’s because they didn’t who they were dealing with. They didn’t know how badly he was itching for a fight, how badly he needed some action, and how badly he wanted to lay down some hurt. Above all, they didn’t know that Slaughter was a hardcore 1%er who rode fast and punched hard, always leaving a trail of broken hearts and bodies in his wake.
But they were about to find out.
He looked at the gun in his hand. “This bothering you boys?” He almost handed it to Dirty Mary, but he thought better of it and slid it back in the canvas holster. “Now we’re even. Now we can talk business. We can discuss this like civilized men, citizens, or we can drop the gloves and let the blood flow. Your choice. Entirely your choice.”
Now that the gun was out of sight and out of mind, the Ratbags were feeling better about themselves. Their old arrogance returned and they felt like men again—all except Snake. They had knives and they were going to use them. First on the biker. And then on his woman. Slaughter let them come in. Like Dirty Mary, he had baited them and now he was going to spring the trap. The Ratbags didn’t know all the gang wars and prison fights he’d been in, how he liked to reel his enemies in like this before he beat ‘em down.
He waited.
They waited.
He was waiting for the big guy to pull his knife because he would. It was only a matter of time. He was the biggest and he looked to be second-in-command so he would have to make a move or he would lose face with the others. Slaughter was looking forward to it. All he needed was to get that big piece of shit in close and then he’d break his arms, smash his nose to pulp, thumb out his eyes, and puncture his solar plexus, leave him rolling in the dirt.
“Well?” he said. “Like Dirty Mary said, either show your dicks or put them away.”
Mary hissed at him.
And then it started.
* * *
The biggest one came first, as expected.
He wasn’t an experienced knife fighter. Instead of slashing out with circular thrusts and timed straight jabs, he lunged forward, bringing his blade—a Marine K-bar—down in an overhead arc. Slaughter pivoted at the last second, snatched the guy’s wrist and twisted it fast and fierce, breaking it, and when the guy pitched forward he kneed him in the face and dropped him.
Things happened fast then.
As he put down the big guy, one of them got up behind him and slipped an arm around his throat and another charged in with a hunting knife. Slaughter jumped up as the Ratbag clutched him and kicked the one with the knife in the stomach. The guy let out a whoosh of air and went down at Dirty Mary’s feet and then she had the knife. He looked up at her, wide-eyed and dazed, the wind knocked out of him, and she started stabbing him, going at it in a real kinetic, kill-happy frenzy. She slashed him across the face and jabbed him in the throat, the arm, then sank the blade between his shoulder blades, riding it down and twisting it while the guy screamed out in pain.
Then the little Hispanic guy came up and kicked her in the head and she lost the knife, a couple of teeth, and started wailing out her death song.
Slaughter fell back into the clutches of the Ratbag who had him in a chokehold and brought his head back with everything he had into the guy’s nose, which dislocated with a popping sound. Then he had his Gurkha knife out, the Kukri, and as the guy pressed his hands to his shattered nose, blood running between his fingers, Slaughter slashed him across the ribs and took his left arm off at the elbow.
There was one of them left by then, the little Hispanic dude, except he was the smart one and he ran outside. Just as Slaughter was going to go after him, finish him out there and make it slow, another truck came roaring down the drive, skidding to a halt before the farmhouse.
He sneaked a peek out the window and saw two guys in camos jump out of the cab. One of them was carrying a .30-30 Winchester and he brought it up quick and fired at Slaughter’s silhouette behind the curtains. Slaughter jumped away just as the bullet punched through the glass. But even so, he felt the hot trail of that round pass just by his head.
More rounds came in, shattering windows in their frames and punching into the walls.
It was about this time that he saw that Dirty Mary was down.
“Shit,” he said.
He crawled over to her and she was gone. She’d taken a slug in the side of the head that nearly split her skull in half. It was his fault and he knew it. If he hadn’t been playing silly fucking games, if he’d just charged in with his Mag and drilled them all, she’d still be alive.
A few more rounds came chewing into the room.
He slid over by the front door and kicked it closed with his boot. More rounds punched through it. He sidled along the wall and threw the lock so it wouldn’t be easy for them.
He heard the staccato report of an M16 on full auto. It was like Bonnie and Clyde out there, he thought, as he crawled along the floor, snaking on his belly and seeking a defensive position. There were three of them now and they were circling the house, just blasting away at the windows, laying down a heavy volume of fire and hoping that they’d gotten him.
Snake and the big guy were still alive; broken and bleeding, but still alive.
Slaughter went after them with the Gurkha knife and killed them both, taking their heads clean off.
About then, the shooting ceased and he could hear the three of them talking out there. Chatting at first as the Hispanic guy told them how the biker had torn them new assholes. Then they all started getting pissed off and randy, wanting payback.
“HEY, ASSHOLE! COME OUT AND WE’LL MAKE IT QUICK!”
But Slaughter figured they probably wouldn’t do that at all.
He had the Kukri, the SS dagger, and the .357 Combat Mag. The latter had six rounds and Slaughter had one speed loader in the pocket of his vest. The .357 was devastating at short range, but it was no match against the M16 or the .30-30. They were rifles and they had range. If he was going to toast those fuckers, then he needed to first get them to expend as much ammo as possible and then make them come inside after him.
First things first.
Time to play the psychological card and throw the fear of Jesus…or the Devil…into them. Make them think they were dealing with a Grade-A meat-eater, a down home psychopath with absolutely no respect for human life…or human remains for that matter.
Slaughter crawled over to Snake’s corpse.
He’d put out a lot of blood and it was like a slow-drying red pool around him. Using the Gurkha knife he reached out and stabbed Snake’s head with the tip, dragging it out of the pool. He sheathed the knife and took the head by its greasy, blood-slicked hair and crept over to one of the windows.
“COME ON OUT, FUCKHEAD! YOU GOT THIRTY SECONDS OR WE COME IN AFTER YOU AND DO THINGS THE HARD WAY!” one of the voices called out to him.
That’s exactly what you’re going to have to do, citizen, Slaughter thought as it all played out in his mind like the reels of some old movie—how it was going to work and how he was going to kill them and, after it was done, how he was going to ride on out and swing it west to the Deadlands. That’s where his destiny was. And these pukes were getting in the way of that. Besides, he had to kill them now because they’d wasted Dirty Mary and even though what he felt for her was many miles away from true love, he figured he owed her a little revenge because nobody appreciated revenge like that alley cat.
“YOU HEAR ME? YOU GOT THIRTY SECONDS!”
Poor bastards. They weren’t used to this shit. They weren’t used to being pushed around like this, fucked with and tormented by one man. They were cheap thugs and armed hoodlums who traveled in the pack of the Red Hand because it gave them strength and kept them from pissing themselves. They liked their victims to be weak and submissive. They didn’t like them to fight back.
“TWENTY SECONDS!” came the booming voice of faux authority.
“FUCK YOU!” Slaughter called out and whipped Snake’s head through the broken window.
He heard it thump to the ground out there and roll like a dropped ball. The Ratbags cried out, swearing and sickened. They began firing at random. Burning up a good thirty rounds, venting their rage at him.
“Have your fun, citizens,” Slaughter said under his breath, sitting down with his back up against the wall. He lit a cigarette and stretched. Well, he’d been looking for action and he was getting his fix today. He was overdos
ing on the shit and the situation should have scared him, but it didn’t. He wasn’t completely comfortable with it, but it made him feel alive. His heart was beating again. His blood was flowing hot. This was what it was about. Death and violence made the man, filled the emptiness inside him and fleshed him out.
He listened to them chattering away out there like old ladies at a Sunday sewing circle. They had a decision to make. One of the newbies was cautioning them about wasting rounds because they were getting low. They’d already used up most of what they had and most of what the guns that Dirty Mary had thrown out into the yard contained. They had to play it cool. The other newbie, a first class hothead, wanted to charge in and take the biker, but the Hispanic guy told him that that would be as stupid as kissing the barrel of a .44. They argued amongst themselves for a bit until the newbie had an idea. He’d run and get reinforcements while the other two waited. Which, Slaughter knew, meant there was a nest of the Red Hand nearby. Not good. Hothead said they’d look like pussies begging help and the Hispanic guy—who seemed to have a way with words—said ‘better a live pussy than a dead dick’.
Slaughter was enjoying the exchange.
The longer it went on, the better it would be for him. Either way, he was going to get them. The only way they were going to survive this was by hauling tail and there was no way hothead would do that.
“Watch it!” the Hispanic guy cried out. “He’s got a gun!”
“So do I,” said Hothead, moving in close to the house.
Slaughter could see his silhouette bobbing and weaving out there. Hothead kept calling out to him, telling Slaughter how he was going to fuck him up, but Slaughter did not respond. Let them think he was wounded or dead or dying. Whatever it took to draw them in and play the next card.
Slaughter moved.
He butted his cigarette and took the decapitated head of the big knife fighter and crept along the wall with it until he was inches from the window that Hothead was approaching.
The barrel of his M16 was moving along the edge of the window frame.