Cannibal Corpse, M/C

They lobbed two more WP grenades into that slaughterhouse so all would burn, all would be cleansed by fire, and all would go to ash.

Then, coughing and gagging, they stumbled off into the other chamber.

* * *

Jumbo was waiting for them. He was carrying the corpse of Shanks who looked like some bloody, slit, and broken ragdoll. “Fish?” he said.

“He’s gone,” Apache Dan told him and said no more.

They brought Shanks outside and laid him in the grass. There was no service, nothing but thoughts and remembrance. There was time for little else. Then, heeding the cries of the prisoners, they moved methodically from one to the other cutting the leather thongs that bound their wrists. Most were on their feet immediately if somewhat unsteadily. Others never lost the glazed look in their eyes. They had to be pushed along by the healthier, saner ones towards the opening.

Slaughter kept asking them the same question again and again: “Which one of you is Katherine Isley?”

He got no responses and that only deepened his dread.

The three Disciples got the prisoners out of the cave and into the relatively fresh air of the night.

“Get out of here,” Slaughter told them. “Go back where you came from or grab a vehicle out front. But go! Just go!”

They need no further urging. They moved off into the night, all except for one young boy who said, “You’re looking for Kathy Isley?”

“Yes.”

He pointed towards the fortress looming in the night. “Colonel Krigg was keeping her in there.” Then the kid ran off.

Krigg was the leader of the Red Hand. Slaughter figured he was probably dead by now and maybe the bio, too, but he had to go look. Much as he hated to, he had to go into that fucking mausoleum.

“Jumbo,” he said as they climbed on their hogs. “Get out front. See if you can find Moondog. Get us an APC. Whatever you can find. When we come out, we’re going to be in a hurry.”

Jumbo fired up his Panhead and roared off into the night.

“You sure you wanna go in there with me?” Slaughter asked Apache Dan as they reloaded their pump shotguns.

He just laughed. “Quit with the stupid fucking questions, John.”

Together, side by side, they rode off towards the fortress.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

There was only one way in and they took it: right through the front doors which had now been nicely widened by the explosion of the War Wagon which was still burning…what was left of it. They rode their bikes right through curtains of flame and funneling smoke until they got clear of it in a corridor.

“Goddamn place is going up, John.”

“We better be quick then.”

Other than the flames, the fortress was shadowy. They pulled out tactical flashlights from their ammo bags (noticing with some unease that they had no shells left, only a couple of grenades) and bracketed them to the barrels of their shotguns. They clicked them on and started hunting. The place was immense and they went room to room to room and, other than a few Cannibal Corpse zombies they killed, they found nothing. Just offices and storerooms and emptiness. From what they could see, the first floor was untouched.

So they climbed the stairs to the second.

More corridors, a labyrinthine maze of them in fact. Many doors were locked. They saw no wormboys and from the screaming they heard outside and the occasional gunfire—Jumbo, no doubt, and hopefully Moondog—the wormboys were probably in hot pursuit of the prisoners which provided a diversion, even if an unwanted one.

They kept scouting around and downstairs they heard rumbling sounds like explosions. Slaughter didn’t think it was ordinance at all, but the fire spreading, finding new rooms to engulf. Things were getting hairy and time was running out and where in the fuck was the bio?

He kept thinking about his brother and that brought to mind Brightman. The two were connected and he wondered, really wondered, how much he could trust that spook.

And what choice do you have? he asked himself. Honestly, ultimately, what choice do you really have? All you can do is keep your word and get the bio. It’s called dealing in good faith. And right now, that’s about all you have. Faith.

Funny. But as he poked his nose into room after room, he heard a voice in the back of his mind praying to God that he could find the woman, get her out, get what remained of his brothers away from this place in one piece. He felt hypocritical. Absolutely hypocritical. When he was a kid, he thought maybe he believed in God. Before Catholic school had destroyed his faith. But for a time, he thought he had. Part of him in these last desperate hours wanted to reconnect with that but it just wasn’t there. Yet, in the back of his brain, that voice kept praying and wasn’t that just amazing? Wasn’t that a wonderful comment on the human species?