Cannibal Corpse, M/C

He changed his strategy. From gentle probing he went for an all-out vicious assault and Slaughter was taken aback at how quickly he moved, how fast and powerful and almost athletic he was for something that had crawled from a grave. He came on swinging and slashing and Slaughter was kept ducking and dipping, looking for an opening and trying to keep from getting cut. When Coffin swung at his head, the force carrying him around in a half-circle, Slaughter seized the opportunity and brought the Kukri down on his forearm. It was a quick, glancing blow but the razored blade of the Gurkha knife peeled Coffin’s left forearm to bone.

What Slaughter didn’t expect was that even a cut like that didn’t make Coffin hesitate. He brought the machete back with maximum thrust and Slaughter avoided the blade, but the arm that held it cracked him in the side of the head and dropped him to the ground.

The Cannibals roared with glee.

Coffin made to stomp him and was successful with three good ones that brought serious pain to Slaughter, but with the fourth stomp he kicked out and caught Coffin’s ankle and the snap of the bone was loud and clear. Hobbled, Coffin staggered back.

Slaughter jumped to his feet.

Coffin made with a few defensive arcs of the blade, but Slaughter came on with renewed fury and took the Cannibal Corpse leader’s hand off at the wrist and slashed his belly open.

“Nice move, Johnny,” he said, gesturing at him with a wrist-stump that pissed a purple-gray fluid. The stump cauterized itself with a sizzling sound and a nauseating odor of burnt skin. Coffin was holding his guts in place with his knife hand. Then the wound cauterized itself, too, and Coffin went at it again. He swung the machete and Slaughter ducked down and hacked Coffin’s bad ankle with the blade of the Kukri.

And if the undead could know pain, Coffin knew it: he let out a raging shrill howl.

His gait was uneven now, but he was far from finished. He went after Slaughter with the machete and Slaughter caught a good gash on the shoulder but gave Coffin two more deep stabs. Before they could begin cauterizing he jumped up and sliced Coffin’s face open, taking one of his eyes out and freeing pockets of gushing black drainage. Coffin lashed out and Slaughter brought the Kukri down and took off his knife hand and then, just missing Coffin’s head, sank the blade about three inches into his shoulder.

But Coffin still came on, battering Slaughter in the face with his stumps. His blade still wedged deeply into the zombie, Slaughter punched him in the stomach and felt his fist sink into a pocket of pulpy tissue. Coffin hammered him with his right stump and Slaughter nearly went down. He pitched to the side and Coffin got behind him, putting a headlock on him and yanking him backwards with brutal force. Slaughter let out a cry and brought the heel of his right motorcycle boot up into Coffin’s crotch were it mashed his spongy genitals to sauce. Then he reached back, pivoted, and flipped Coffin over his shoulder.

With the impact, the Gurkha knife came free and Slaughter dove for it. A pair of Cannibals tried to get to it before him and he bowled them over, coming up with the knife.

“Come on, Johnny,” Coffin said, gouts of cherry-red juice spilling from his mouth. “Show me what you got.”

So Slaughter did just that.

He brought the Kukri to play, hacking at Coffin’s face until it came apart in a wet vomit of skullbone and gurgling raw blood matter. Then it was time to finish him and as he stepped forward to do that, things started to happen. Coffin’s entire body, damaged and stitched, slashed open and steaming with spilling fluids, began to move with a writhing vermiform motion like it was trying to crawl free of the bone beneath. He was like a hissing hot gas swamp of tissue, boiling and bubbling, letting out geysers of searing steam.

Slaughter fell back and away.

He wanted to take Coffin’s head off, but he didn’t dare get too close. Coffin’s was like a shadow box thrown open, splitting, stitches popping, creeks of blood and brain matter pouring forth along with an oozing yolky excrescence of brilliant red gore. It was liquiform and plastic, melting and running like tallow, sputtering like hot grease. It showed Slaughter faces—Dirty Mary and the Skeleton Man, the Mad Hatter and Black Hat, Coffin and Reptile, Frank Feathers and Indiana, too many to properly catalog. Then it began to dissolve, not like acid was eating into it but as if it were being eaten away by flesh-eating bacteria in fast, hyper-fast motion.

Then, before it got any worse, Slaughter took Coffin’s head off with a fierce swing.