Cannibal Corpse, M/C

Slaughter swallowed something down in his throat and thought about trying to bullshit the man but he knew he couldn’t do it, so he told him everything and with the telling it sounded even worse than he thought it would.

When he was done, Apache Dan said, “Leviathan. Leviathan, man. Dig it. That’s heavy shit. The Lord of the Dead. Goddamn.”

“You still want to go through with this?”

Apache Dan smiled. “I want it more than ever, John. This is epic. This is the shit sagas are written about. If you’re going to go out, I always say, then go out big. And what better way for a Disciple to cash-in than fighting the Devil himself?”

“You are one crazy mother,” Slaughter told him.

“That’s why I wear the patch, my brother. Because I earned the right.”

* * *

As the sun set, they were sitting on a grassy hilltop beneath the cover of some trees scoping out the NORAD complex below which looked like the castle of a witch in some evil fairy tale. The place was much as Brightman had described it: three stories of gray concrete, drab and deathly and utilitarian. Boxlike with a flat roof and rectangular windows, all of which were covered in steel mesh. The compound surrounding it was faced off by a circular drive and a huge parking lot that was now cracked open with sprouting weeds. There was a courtyard of high yellow grasses that stretched out about three hundred feet in every direction until it reached a high chainlink fence topped with razor wire. The road leading up to the main gate was long and straight and set out with lots of abandoned guard shacks. With his binoculars, Slaughter could see where the tire traps had been—sheaths of spikes that would rise up out of the road at intervals to snag any vehicle that tried to make a run at the complex. He could also see obvious scars in the landscape outside the main fence where a series of fences had been taken out after the complex closed up shop. At one time, the fences would have held dog runs in-between with vicious German Shepherds that would have stopped anybody from even getting close to the place. Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s and probably right up into the 1980’s, if you would have been even as close as they were on the hilltop you would have been arrested by MPs and tossed in a military prison. It had been secure during the Cold War, but now it was wide open.

The main gate was thrown wide and why not? Cannibal Corpse feared no one. And who in their right mind would willingly go through those gates into a nest of flesh-eaters?

Only the Devil’s Disciples, he thought.

“You can’t see the flesh farm from here,” Apache Dan said. “It’s out back behind the place.”

Slaughter could see a rising rock wall back there and Apache said there was a high cave in it that was not natural but hewn-out and must have held some kind of top security facility in the NORAD days.

“From what I could see of it when Moondog and me scoped it from the other side, it looks big enough to drive three or four tanks into at the same time. Hard to say what was in there or what’s in there now. Might have been a bunker or a bomb shelter. Who knows?”

“But that’s probably where our bio will be if she’s anywhere.”

“That’s what we think.”

Sitting there, Slaughter saw the ratbikes of the Cannibals parked in the lot, in the drive, on the grass. They were everywhere. He counted fifty-seven of them so that meant they had at least fifty-seven members of the Nation to deal with. Not good odds for six men, even if they were hard-charging bullet-eating members of the Devil’s Disciples Nation.

He thought over the plan Moondog had come up with. As warlord and sergeant-at-arms and a combat veteran, his plan was good. It was workable. But it was full of holes and that wasn’t poor planning or strategy, but the fact that with six men there was only so much that could be foreseen and mapped out. A good part of it was going to be the element of surprise combined with luck.

Slaughter had been over it from start to finish a dozen times at least and he honestly couldn’t come up with anything better.

Parked in the lot amongst the ratbikes were the vehicles of the Red Hand—APCs, Hummers, and pickup trucks. If all went successful, they’d be charging out of there in a pair of APCs. Once they started rolling, with their weapons systems and heavy armaments, nothing could stop them.

If they could get to that part of things, and it wouldn’t be easy.

Slaughter stood up. He saw maybe a dozen Cannibals moving around down there, shambling about as their kind did. Inside the fortress, he thought, was where Reptile and Coffin would be if they were still in fact walking.

“I guess that about does it,” he said.

“I guess so, man. Now we wait for dark.”

Slaughter nodded, feeling his blood running hot. “Then we get it on.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven