Cannibal Corpse, M/C

by Tim Curran

  “So I hit the fortress, grab this woman and bring her back?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “That’s all there is to it?”

  “Sure. If you survive the walking dead, assorted mutants, and the drifting clouds of fallout. Other than that, Slaughter, it’s a cake walk.”

  “You’re a funny guy.”

  Brightman told him that the fortress was a former NORAD complex that dated from the Cold War: three stories of steel-reinforced concrete, with another two levels below ground. It was, more or less, a bunker that had been appropriated by the Red Hand.

  Slaughter chuckled. Lit another cigarette. “And you want me, some dirtbag biker, to play Delta Force and go on some kind of James Bond fucking commando raid? You’re more fucked up than I am.” He blew smoke out of his nostrils. “Why don’t you send in special ops or something?”

  “Because we don’t want to waste them,” Brightman said with all honesty. “The chances of success are very slim. No sense getting highly-trained soldiers killed when we’ve got people like you.”

  “And if I don’t do this?”

  “You’ll either spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison or you’ll go to the death house.” Brightman smiled then, something better up his sleeve. “But there’s more incentive…John. You don’t mind me calling you John, do you?”

  “Yeah, I do. That’s what my friends call me. You can call me Slaughter.”

  Brightman was unperturbed. “As I said, there’s more incentive. There’s your brother to be considered.”

  Shit.

  This was how they made it personal. Slaughter had one brother, Perry, who was known as Red Eye for the copious amounts of dope he used to smoke. He’d been a hang-around—a potential prospect for membership—with a few different small 1%er clubs out east, then drifted west to Illinois, got nailed on a few petty charges, did some county time, and the last Slaughter had heard of him was that he was hooked up with some half-ass religious cult. That was Red Eye to the core: always looking for something.

  Slaughter butted his cigarette. “All right, lay it on me.”

  So Brightman did. Red Eye had been busted. The feds took him down on charges of treason, sedition, arms trafficking, and six counts of terrorism for plotting the military overthrow of Chicago with a fanatic known as The Puritan, who headed an ultra-right wing Christian fundamentalist militia known as the Legion of Terror. They were like the Seventh Day Adventists. With guns.

  “Shit,” Slaughter sighed.

  “Yes, shit indeed. He’s being held in a federal correctional institution.”

  “And if I don’t play ball he stays there?”

  “No, he gets the death penalty.”

  Well, there you had it. Slaughter knew there had to be an agenda behind all the resources and manpower spent bringing him in and here it was. Not only an agenda, but one with serious incentives to back it up. There was no choice. Not really.

  “He goes free if I do this?”

  “He’ll do five years, maybe. But no more.”

  “I suppose that’s something.”

  Brightman leaned back in his chair. “From where you’re sitting, Slaughter, it’s everything. Your life. Your brother’s. You get Isley back and everything’s clean. If you don’t…scratch one brother.”

  “What if this woman’s already dead?”

  “Then bring us her corpse.”

  “Shit.” Again, no choice. “So I have to go in there alone? One fucking man?”

  “I wouldn’t even expect that of a murdering, raping animal like you, Slaughter,” Brightman explained. “I’ve put together a team for you. We’ve cleaned them out of prisons across the land just so you’ll have company.”

  “A team?” Oh, this was going to be good.

  Brightman thumbed a button on his intercom. Within seconds two soldiers with automatic weapons strolled in and behind them, chained together were some of the most vicious, degenerate criminal types that Slaughter had ever seen, and he knew each and every one of them. Brightman had secured the release of the remaining six members of the Devil’s Disciples. And here they were. All of them flying their colors, all of them grinning, and all of them looking for a good fight.

  Slaughter figured they weren’t going to be disappointed.

  He started laughing. “The shit is on, my brothers.”

  * * *

  The gang was all there: Irish, Moondog, Shanks, Apache Dan, Fish, and Jumbo. They’d been released from hardtime federal pens like Atlanta and Lewisburg, state hellholes like Rahway in New Jersey and SCI Greene in Pennsylvania. For the longest time—after he got Brightman out of his hair, that was—Slaughter just stood there staring at his brothers, blown away by it all, nearly beyond words. Seeing them, he was reminded of all the Disciples that had died during the Outbreak and in blood wars with other clubs.

  Brightman let them have the conference room all to themselves and all the beer they wanted with the stipulation that they kept it and themselves in there and did not cause trouble elsewhere. So for the first hour or so as they put down the brew and exchanged war stories and tales of lock-up, they got caught up on things. In a lot of ways it was like Church, the monthly club meeting. They talked about Brothers like Cherry from the Pittsburgh chapter who’d thrown his bike on the I outside Altoona two months before the Outbreak. His funeral had turned into a drunken brawl. Slaughter learned that Charley Sweet from the Baltimore chapter had died in a shoot-out with the state police and two others—Creep and Toot—had died in a car crash while being pursued by ATF agents. Pegleg, who had first brought Slaughter into the club twenty odd years before, had died in Rahway from spiking some China White that had been more strychnine than heroin. The list went on and on.

  There were so many gone that it became depressing.

  If it hadn’t have been for incarceration, Slaughter knew, the six Disciples with him would probably be dead, too.

  Yeah, give three cheers for life in-stir, he thought.

  What there was in that room was all that was left of the Devil’s Disciples Nation: seven hard-living, hard-riding animals. This was his crew. At one time there’d been thirty guys in the Pittsburgh chapter alone and that, of course, didn’t take in the Baltimore, Harrisburg, Youngstown, and Bayonne chapters, or the newer chapters in the UK and Denmark.

  Seven fucking guys including me.

  That’s it. No more. Probably never will be any more, he thought then. And I have to lead them to their deaths so I can grab that Isley, the bio, so they don’t cook my fucked-up, whacked-out brother.

  Slaughter was glad Apache Dan was there because next to Neb, he was his best friend in the world. The feds had dropped him thirty years on a RICO conviction six years before. Nobody was happier to be out than him. Moondog was the sergeant-at-arms, warlord of the Pittsburgh chapter. He’d been the guy that walked around with a baseball bat at club meetings and rapped guys in the head if they got out of hand or spoke out of turn. He was absolutely brutal and fearless and the very man that could plan and stage a raid into the guts of the Red Hand. He’d been doing ten years at USP Atlanta for arms trafficking. Shanks and Irish were from the Youngstown chapter and were good boys. They’d been whacking guys for the Youngstown Italian mob and were doing life at Lewisburg on murder conspiracy convictions. Fish was out of Baltimore. And Jumbo—all 350 pounds of him—was from Pittsburgh. Fish had been sitting on a twenty-five year stretch for narcotics distribution and Jumbo on fifteen years for extortion, hijacking, and racketeering.

  Once everyone had a good shine going, Slaughter stood up and laid it all out for them. What was at stake, what they had to do, and how slim their chances of survival were.

  “Nobody’s forced into this shit, man,” he told them. “This is really my beef, my brother, my life. Any of you boys want out you just say so and nobody thinks less of you.”

  “You heard the man,” Moondog said.

  “Shit,” Shanks said.

  “Fuck that noise,” Fish said. �
��I’d rather die out here than rot inside.”

  “Ain’t that for sure,” Irish told him. “I gotta eat that creamed beef on toast in Lewisburg one more fucking time and I take my own life.”

  A few laughs at that.

  “Shit,” Fish said. “You oughta try the green bean casserole at Rahway. Motherfucker, it’ll shrivel your balls.”

  “Bullshit,” Shanks said.

  Jumbo said, “John, this is a get-out-of-jail-free card for us all. And there ain’t a man here you haven’t helped and you haven’t gone to the mat for. We’d all rather die at your side, high and free, than be picking nits at the graybar hotel.”

  “Yeah, that’s the shit plain and clear,” Apache Dan said. “We’re Disciples so let’s get it on, baby.”

  So that pretty much took care of that.

  Slaughter figured he had to throw that out there just to be fair on things. Even though he was in charge as the club president of Pittsburgh and nobody disputed the fact, the Disciple Nation had always been a democracy and every patch had his say, every member voted. But Slaughter knew they wouldn’t let him down. It was inconceivable for the men they were. Once you were patched-in to a club like the Disciples, the club and its members always came first. First before wives, girlfriends, family, jobs and your own well-being. First before even God. That’s the kind of connection there was. It wasn’t easy to earn the three-piece patch of the Devil’s Disciples, prospecting for them could be three shades of hell, but once you were part of it, once you were patched-in, you were part of something bigger than yourself and you took care of that and it took care of you.

  “All right then,” Slaughter said. “We all agree. So I call a war council and we plan this shit out.”

  Once war council was called, everyone yielded to Moondog, the war lord, even the president, because Moondog was the guy who was responsible for the safety of the club, the security of its members, and carrying out raids and retribution against enemies of the Disciples. Moondog, whose real name was Mike Spector, was cut from the same cloth as Slaughter himself: both were ex-Marines. But whereas Slaughter had seen some action in Iraq with the 15th Marine Expeditionary, before he was sent stateside and spent most of his enlistment in the brig, Moondog had been a member of an elite Scout/Sniper platoon and a demolitions expert. There wasn’t much about weapons or explosives, night-fighting or surveillance that he did not know.

  So when Moondog spoke, even the baddest boys of the club listened and listened good.

  “While you girls been having your hen party, I been scratching down some items we’re gonna need. First off, we all need bikes. Second, we need guns and I’d like some C-4 and det cord just in case. Grenades would be nice. White phosphorus…”

  His list was long and detailed.

  His strategy, based on Brightman’s map of the NORAD fortress, was sketchy. The fortress was surrounded by a high chainlink fence. That would have to be breeched. There were six doors leading into the structure itself. One or more would have to be blown. Other than possibly the use of several diversions to draw the rats from their den, he had no solid plans and wouldn’t, he said, until he scoped out the place and knew the numbers of the Red Hand, their weapons, what kind of security they were running. Most of the Ratbags at the fortress were ex-military. They were commanded by Colonel Krigg himself, the leader of the Red Hand. Chances were, things would be tight.

  “All I can tell you right now is that it’s gonna be fucking hairy,” he said. “That and the fact that I want explosives. Lots of C-4.”

  This whole ride into Indian country was going to be one for the books, one to go down in the annals of the Disciple Nation, one to remember.

  If any of them survived it, that was.

  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.