Cannibal Corpse, M/C

Slaughter laughed, but explained it all. He pointed to the red patch on his vest that read 1%er. Once upon a time, according to the American Motorcycle Association, it was said that 99% of motorcycle clubs were law-abiding citizens which meant that the other 1% were outlaws and members of what the law referred to as OMGs, Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.

“Ah, so you’re one of those rough-riders and hellraisers.”

“I am a blood member of the Devil’s Disciples. I was chapter president in Pittsburgh. I’m the last one. But I live as a Disciple and I die as a Disciple. Us 1%ers had a code of conduct same as you did when you were a soldier: we live free and we die free.”

“What about the law?”

“The law exists for citizens,” Slaughter told him. “And now, out here, they’re ain’t no fucking law, so I fit right in, man.”

At the gates, Slaughter blew the locks off so the old man wouldn’t have to climb back over which was how he’d exacerbated his leg injuries in the first place.

“Nice looking ride you got there, son,” Rice said when he saw the hardtail.

“She gets the job done.”

They climbed on and Slaughter took them on down the road, showing the old man exactly what his scoot could do when called upon to eat some street.

Chapter Seven

Rice directed them off of 94 onto a dusty secondary road and Slaughter took it slowly, avoiding all the potholes and dips. The sun rose higher as he followed it, and was hot against the back of his neck. In the bitch seat, the old man said nothing and that was fine because there was nothing worse than having some needledick on the back that couldn’t hold his mud. It fucked up the whole experience of being one with the wind.

As he grannyed the hog along in low gear, Slaughter watched the countryside roll by. Acres and acres of farmland burnt yellow by the summer sun and unrelieved by a single drop of rain. Even the ditches were dry, the cattails withered and drooping. His mouth tasted like dry wheat chaff, his skin layered in dust. Just miles of farmland. Repetitive. Monotonous. Got under your skin after a time. All those fields and pastures, nothing to break it up but tired-looking silos, collapsing barns, farmhouses weathered as gray as tombstones.

He started, thinking about the Deadlands again because that’s what he wanted, not this, not this rural ma-and-pa shit. Even despite that woman in the lab back at the compound, he wanted it. He wanted to go out there and get in the thick of it.

But the old man’s nice, he told himself, so be nice back. He offers you supper and a bed, take it. He needs help with something, help him. He’s a citizen but he’s okay.

They came around a wild stand of honeysuckle and black cherry that blocked their view and the first thing they saw was the screaming man. He was down on his knees, shirt soaked bright red with blood, and two zombies were standing over him. They had knives and they were using them, almost playfully slashing him to death. They took their time, slitting off his nose, hacking off an ear, taking a few fingers from an upraised hand. The wormboy on the right didn’t have a face as such, just a swollen, perforated mass that oozed a black jelly; the one on the left had a face, but most of it was hanging off the gray, maggoty skull beneath by strings of gristle.

“Better get your widowmaker ready,” Rice said, still holding his empty shotgun.

Slaughter figured he was right because there was no way they were going to get around this scene, so they might as well join the dance and lighten the earth of a few more walking corpses.

He parked the bike off the shoulder and right away he could smell the stink of putrescence. The two zombies paid them little attention, but kept at their butchering until their victim curled up in the dusty road like a dead snake. Standing just off a ways was an old woman in a frayed calico dress, dark stains all over the bosom, a morbid fungi growing up the sleeves and collar line, settling around her throat in a furry scarf. Some kind of grave mold had grown out of her nostrils and eaten away one side of her face like an ulcer.

“That’s Iris McClew,” Rice said, fighting the urge to take his hat off in the presence of a lady. “I’ll be damned. She had the farm down the road from mine. She’s been in the ground a month. Worms must have found her.”

Slaughter studied her.

She must have been a real pistol in life, wound tighter than a corset, a real terror by the looks of her: acid-tongued, opinionated, intolerant, a bible-thumping spinster who’d gone to the grave with her legs crossed and virginity intact. She still carried some of that and you could see it in her one good eye…even though it was filmed yellow.

“This is no concern of yours, George Rice,” she said in a cracking, dry voice. “I would ask you to mind your own business.”

“Like you ever minded yours,” Rice told her.