by Curran, Tim
“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.
“You dead in there?” Hothead taunted.
Slaughter felt like smarting off, saying, yeah, I’m dead, you fucking hillbilly, but then he remembered where he was and how things were these days. The old rules didn’t apply. Just because you were dead didn’t mean you couldn’t talk.
The barrel came in an inch, sweeping back and forth.
Christ, this guy was stupid.
The barrel came in two inches, then three.
Slaughter waited. He rose up, back flat against the wall, the head in his right hand. He started swinging it back and forth by the hair, getting a feel for the heft of it the way an athlete likes to get the feel for the ball he has to throw.
As the barrel pulled back, Slaughter moved.
He swung the head out with everything he had, bringing it around in a fast arc and tossing it right at the guy out there. The other Ratbags saw him move but with their brother in the line of fire, they couldn’t open up. The head hit old Hothead, smacking into his shoulder, knocking him to his ass, and he responded in kind by firing off ten rounds into the sky.
That did it.
That crazy fucker in there was throwing heads and that just wasn’t right.
The Ratbags out there lost it. Even the Hispanic guy who was something of a cool head. He ran around the side of the house, no doubt making for the back door, while Hothead jogged up the porch steps and prepared to bust in the front way. The other guy—the one with the .30-30—was giving them covering fire, just randomly putting rounds through windows hoping to keep Slaughter down covering his head.
Not so.
He slipped out of the living room and into the dining room. There was a door leading from it out into the kitchen. The Hispanic guy would have to go through it to get to him. Slaughter hedged his bets by sliding a chair in front of the door so it would not be easy for him. He’d have to fight his way through.
Hothead was jiggling the front door handle.
The other guy was still peppering the house indiscriminately.
Slaughter crawled into the living room. They were going to sandwich him, try the classic pincer movement, which meant he had to get creative. He dragged the corpse of the one-armed Ratbag into the dining room, then hoisted him up to a standing position. Sonofabitch stank pretty good. Not just the blood and meat but the shit in his pants as well.
Slaughter held him up.
Hothead blew the lock off the front door and stormed in. Slaughter could hear his boots clomping about as he moved around in the living room, scanning for unfriendlies. Then he saw the blood smear drag mark leading into the dining room. He followed it, thinking the biker was bleeding to death.
Slaughter was waiting for him just around the side of the door.
He’d have precious few seconds when Hothead slipped into the room. He waited. And in came Hothead with his rifle raised to fire. As he turned, Slaughter heaved the corpse at him. The fear and confusion were instantaneous. A corpse plowing into anyone would raise fear and disgust and more than a little horror, but these days with the walking dead breeding like flies in a dead cat’s skull, a corpse coming at you was the last thing you wanted to see. The corpse slammed into Hothead and they both went down in a heap. Hothead dropped his rifle, squirming and fighting to get the corpse off him. And by the time he did, Slaughter brought the Kukri down on his skull, nearly cleaving his head in half.
He died flopping in a pool of blood and brain matter.
And by then, the Hispanic guy was fighting his way through the door, firing a few rounds as he did so.
Slaughter was on him.
He brought the blade of the Gurkha knife down on his hand that gripped the barrel of the sixteen, freeing three fingers in the process. The Hispanic guy screamed and dropped the rifle and Slaughter slashed his eyes to running pink pulp and then sliced open his belly with another quick slash. The dying man hit the floor, kicking and shrieking, his bowels bulging from his belly.
A few more rounds were fired from outside.
Really enjoying the carnage by that point, Slaughter dragged Hothead’s corpse into the living room and threw it out the window.
There was no more shooting.
The guy with the .30-30 jumped in one of the trucks and drove like hell, spitting gravel and making his escape. Too bad. He was the one that had popped Dirty Mary. Slaughter wanted him.
Stepping out into the sunshine, he grabbed the dead kid’s ruck and made his way back to his hog. The shadows were growing long and he decided to grab a crib for the night down the road.
Then tomorrow…tomorrow he was heading west into the Valley of the Dead because that voice was getting real strong now.
Chapter Five
He found a rusty mobile home sheltered in the trees about six miles away and, after making sure it was secure against whatever might come, he rolled out his sleeping bag and fell asleep listening to mice chewing on the upholstery. It was a quiet night other than the mice and a lone coyote howling out in the woods. He had bad dreams and he was glad when he opened his eyes and it was light out.
He lay there, smoking, watching dust motes twist in the beams of sunlight and smelling the dank stink of the trailer.
Most days started out the same for Slaughter…dismal and desperate.
He’d wake up with a hint of hope that would turn to sheer anxiety by noon, complete despair by suppertime, and out and out misery by sundown. That’s the way it had been for months now. He’d grit his teeth and close his eyes like somebody on a roller coaster and just wait for it to be over, his head filled with the glory of the old days and wild ways. Most of the time he couldn’t feel a thing. Not happiness or sadness or anything in between. He’d just be numb as frostbite, stiff and wooden, going through the motions, like a corpse that had gotten tired of waiting for the funeral and decided to take a walk. One of these days, he supposed, he’d lay back down again for good.
These past weeks it had been getting progressively worse. Cooped up on the farm with Dirty Mary. Not moving. Not riding. Not doing anything but feeling that almost magnetic pull of the west and the Deadlands. Something out there was calling his name and it wanted him real bad.
It had gotten so that every day was a battle not to give in to it.
But he knew he couldn’t leave until Dirty Mary hooked up with somebody else. There was no way in hell he was taking her out there. Now…that had changed.
No strings.
No responsibilities.
When Slaughter met Dirty Mary he knew she was trouble just like she knew he was trouble. But neither of them had cared because at the time there’d been a mutual need. They were both lonely and scarred-up following the Outbreak. They’d lost everything like most survivors had, and their lives had turned turtle. Slaughter knew she was one mean mama, but hell…you give a starving man a bone with a little meat on it and he enjoys every bite and every nibble. He feels like a rich man for awhile. And that’s how he felt. Like something inside him was actually alive. Like there was hope for a happy ending after all. His intuition, of course, told him to run as fast and far away from her as he could, but he didn’t listen. What his soul knew and what his heart said were two different things.
Now she was dead and that was a real shitter.
Slaughter would have buried her proper, but he fig
ured the Red Hand would be coming back in force to sort his ass out and, truth be told, things like funerals and send-offs just didn’t seem to matter much anymore. The dead were the dead and they had it better than the living (the ones that didn’t move, that was) so you left them to it.
He had some Spam and canned beef stew for breakfast and then went out to his scoot and packed his saddlebags properly for a long run.
It was time to head into the Deadlands.
* * *
About ten miles down the road, he found a little town called Freemont and siphoned gas from a pickup to fill his tank. He filled another five gallon can and strapped it to the back of his hog figuring it might be awhile in between fill-ups. Then he toured the town almost casually, looking for signs of wormboys or militias and seeing not a thing except for something weird in the river that cut through the town: some black, shiny, snake-like thing that darted out of the ebon water and took hold of a gull and pulled it under.
He didn’t wait to see what it was because there were nameless things the farther you pushed west.
The rest of the town was just a graveyard. Empty houses, cars rusting at curbs, trees down in the middle of the streets, some bones scattered in yards but not much else. He didn’t see so much as a scavenging dog or a single rat. Either Freemont had been devastated by the Outbreak or its citizens pulled up stakes and retreated to the east. Probably both.
As he approached the outer boundaries of the town he came upon block after block of burnt, razed houses. The streets were torn apart by bomb craters. There were literally dozens of skeletons in the rubble or wound up in yellow grasses in vacant lots.
Apparently there had been some kind of battle fought there.
Back out on the highway, he headed west, rolling out on 94, throttling up, listening to the constant calming bellow of the hog’s straight pipes. Traffic was light, nonexistent in fact, not like the old days when you hit the road. Now the only cages out there were wrecked cars and buses, semis in the ditch.
But the road…it owned him.
There was a special feeling when you were on your scoot, aiming her down the ribbon of pavement, you and the bike joined at the hip, the wind in your face, the road coming up to meet you. It was freedom and it was exhilaration, it was electricity in your veins, every sense heightened and purified. Things made sense.
Slaughter rode for miles like that, feeling clean and unpolluted: real.
Soon enough, the memories came back, filling his brain with shadows and ghosts, road runs and field events and rallies, riding out front of the pack. All gone now, all gone. Think about something else, he told himself. Think about where you’re going and what you’re going to do when you get there.
Sure, I’d do that but I just don’t know. I’m going on a hunch, a gut instinct, listening to voices telling me what to do and where to go same as I have my whole life and that’s all I know about it.
Well, you must have some sort of plan. You’ve always had some sort of plan, Slaughter. Something hazy in the back of your mind…or what there is of it.
True. Only this time I’m flying by the seat of my pants more than ever before. I have to do this. I have to go out here. There’s something waiting for me and I don’t know what but I got this crazy ass feeling that it might be the most important thing of my life.
You could always turn tail, head back to Milwaukee or Chi, hide out there. You got lots of friends and you know it.
Sure and I got lots of enemies, too. My friends are all with other clubs and how long before they want me to flip patches and join up? And I ain’t doing that. I might be the last free living Devil’s Disciple, but I’ll be 100% Disciple Nation until the day I die. Besides, if I go back I’ll have to live like the wanted man I am. Only a matter of time before somebody dimes me and I end up back in prison.
Then maybe you shouldn’t have killed those two cops. Maybe for the first time in your life you should have asked a few questions before you started shooting.
Questions, shit. Those cops gunned down Neb in cold blood. Maybe they had him in their sights for trafficking, but they were supposed to be the law. Neb wasn’t even packing. He didn’t even have a blade on him. They asked him his name and when he told them, they blew his ass away. What was I supposed to do? He was a brother, he was a Disciple. It was my oath to avenge him. It was murder. It was nothing but fucking murder.
And it was.
They’d been hanging low in New Castle, Neb and Slaughter, the last two Disciples, keeping under the radar because there were still a few minor warrants floating on them—probation violation in Neb’s case, assault in Slaughter’s. Chickenshit stuff from before the Outbreak that the John Laws decided still needed to be enforced. And this, Jesus, with half the country in ruins and zombies walking the streets and mad dog militias clashing with the Army and nukes dropping out west. When the cops kicked their way into Neb’s old lady’s apartment, Slaughter had been in the can but he heard what came down, how Neb had run some cover for him so he could get away and then the cops put him down.
And as a brother, as a Disciple, there was only one thing Slaughter could do. While the cops were celebrating their kill, he came out of the bathroom with a MAC-10 that Neb had stashed behind the toilet. The cops saw him. Their shit-eating grins evaporated. They reached for their weapons and Slaughter gave it to them full auto, emptying the clip into them, blowing them apart like party piñatas, their stuffing scattered about in red, runny pools.
Didn’t take long for word to get around that Neb’s old lady—Indiana, she was called—had dimed them, brought the heat down on their asses. Didn’t take long either for Slaughter to hunt her down and do her up proper with a knife. And it took even less time for the State of Pennsylvania to put out a warrant for John Slaughter…three counts of capital murder.
Of course, he tipped that one in the law’s favor by leaving the spent MAC-10 with his prints all over it next to the perforated bodies of the cops. Same went for the knife they found sticking out of Indiana’s belly. But it hadn’t been carelessness on his part. Slaughter had been in and out of county lock-ups, had pulled time in state and federal joints for everything from aggravated assault to armed robbery to battery of a police officer.
He knew the system.
He knew they’d match his prints.
And he wanted them to. Because that was part of the 1% lifestyle, that was part of the blood oath and the brotherhood—you’re good to us, we’re better to you; you fuck with us, we bring hell down upon your ass. The cops had murdered Neb in cold blood just because they wanted to and because they thought they were above the law. So Slaughter had returned the favor and took out them and their rat. It was a way for the world of police and criminals to know one thing: you hurt a Disciple, you get it in kind and no badge or court system or witness protection program will save your ass.
It was a statement. Because in the outlaw biker world, respect and fear were the primary tools of enforcement.
So Slaughter ran west.
And he was still running.
Running into a deep dark pocket of desolation where they wouldn’t find him.
And if they did, well, out in the Deadlands it would be war to the knife.
Chapter Six
Around noon when those sweetgrass Minnesota hills were so close he could smell them and feel their freedom chugging in his veins along with his blood, he came across a compound that was secured with a chainlink fence and had guard towers set at its perimeter.
Right away, it intrigued him.
Funny a place like this, out here.
The idea of that reached out, gripped him, held him, made him downshift and circle back around. He figured he was in no hurry, though once he was across the big river and into the Deadlands he was going to breathe easier.
Slaughter pulled to a stop on the hill, dug in his saddlebags and brought out a pair of compact Minox binoculars. They came in handy when you needed to see what was down the road a piece. He scanned the compo
und. No sign of life. Lots of weathered gray blockhouses lined up like ranks of tombstones. Nobody in the guard towers. No movement anywhere. It looked deserted.
He decided he needed to have a look see.
He pulled up to the gates cautiously. They were locked with chains and rusty padlocks. The gate was the only spot along the high fence that didn’t have barbwire spooled atop it. It was here or nowhere. Strapping on his web belt with the Combat Mag in its olive-drab holster and the Kukri in its leather sheath, he climbed up and over, dropping into the dirt drive on the other side. He followed it up to the first row of buildings, his motorcycle boots kicking up clouds of dust. Most of the windows were either boarded over by unfinished planks or broken out completely. He tried one door, then another, both were locked. Both shook in their frames and he figured he could have kicked his way through had the need struck him.
But it didn’t.
The road zigzagged amongst the rows of block houses, a few sheet metal pole buildings that were bleeding rust. It was a warm day and the air was thick and turgid like summer molasses, a negligible breeze blowing out hot and dry. He was struck by the silence. In that place it was not something to be ignored: it was harsh and immense with an almost physical weight that bore down on you. He felt it around him like a dark river bursting its banks, flooding the compound with a stillness that was like a tide of darkness cutting through that glaring, bone-white day. It broke up into channels and creeks and eddies, each flowing soundless and distant. Loose rain gutters creaked. Flies lit in the air. Little whirling dust-devils sought cul-de-sacs and pockets of sinister shadow between the buildings.
If there was one thing Slaughter had learned to trust in all his years of living free and riding hard, it was his instinct. It had saved his bacon more times than he could remember. And right then it was warning him away from this place, sensing despair and misery and agony beyond comprehension. An aura of seamless, black evil that crouched in every shadow, pressed up to every grimy window pane, and dripped like blood in the darkness behind bolted doors. If the compound had a voice, it was a scream in the dead of night and a whimpering of whipped dogs in the bright of day.