Cannibal Corpse, M/C

On the good side, the I was clean; there were very few wrecks and absolutely no citizens. That was one good thing that had come out of the Outbreak, it kept the citizens off the road with their cages, cleared away the rice rockets and weekenders.

The sun was getting warm, burning off the morning mist, and he could feel it warming up his arms and all that intricate inking—the snakes and skulls, dragons and tombstones, the bright red swastikas on each bicep overlaying the serpents and gargoyles beneath, the black SS deathshead on the back of his left hand.

He was feeling good about things, starting to think that—

Wait a minute now.

Wait a fucking minute.

In the distance he could see something. And not just one thing but many. Vehicles. They weren’t wrecks. They were heading in his direction at full steam. He popped the clutch and decelerated, slowing until he came to a stop. He dug in his saddlebag and pulled out the Minox binoculars, held them to his eyes and tightened the field…shit and shit. Those were Hummers. Military Humvees.

He had a sudden bad feeling about things, which became even worse when he heard the thunk-thunk-thunk of the chopper as it came over the tree line in the distance, sweeping through the sky above him.

He had to get off the I.

He throttled up, cutting across fields of yellow grass and stunted corn, over humps and down into little vales, pushing along, giving the hog some speed but not so much that he’d lose her on the uneven terrain. Any thought he’d had that it was all purely coincidental vanished when the chopper passed overhead again, and behind him the Hummers entered the field as well, pushing forward in a solid line, chewing through the corn like harvesters.

Fuck.

They had his number.

He gunned up a hill, came out on a gravel road and opened the bike up, wary of a skid, but knowing he had to get some real estate between him and the Hummers. That chopper kept circling overhead. It was eyeing him and unless he could get to some cover, some trees, it was all over with. He kept riding, throwing a contrail of dust behind him.

The gravel road wound out through open country and that was bad. In the distance it entered a pine thicket. If he could just make it into the trees he might have a chance. He throttled up a bit, gaining speed and momentum. In the rearview he could see that the Hummers were on the road, too, coming fast.

He cut onto a side road that circled through some heavier brush and then onto a footpath. Up a hill, down another, over a footbridge and then off the path into the grass again, finding what looked like a dry ravine bedded by flat sandstone. He followed it, nearing the pine thicket and knowing he just wasn’t going to make it. Overhead, the helicopter came veering down in a strafing run. He heard the crack! crack! of a high-powered rifle. Bullets thudded into the stones around him, splitting some in two with little puffs of rock dust. The rifle kept firing and the rounds landed in front of him, behind him, to either side.

They could have pegged you if they wanted, Slaughter thought as he pulled up out of the ravine and cut onto the gravel road again. They’re herding you. They want you alive.

He decided he would not make it easy on them, whoever in the hell they were. His scoot could go places they couldn’t and once he got into the trees the helicopter would be useless. First, he had to get into the trees, though. And once he was there, if it came down to it…he would fight to the end.

Okay. Not far now.

Maybe five minutes.

The Hummers were closing and he couldn’t throttle the hog any more or he was going to spill her. The road was rough and potholed, the gravel was loose. Things like that meant nothing to the Hummers, of course. They poured it on even more. And here came that fucking chopper again, the gunner firing off rounds, throwing lead like rice at a wedding: crack! crack! ca-rack!

But there was the thicket beyond…cool, shadowy depths where he could fade.

It was going to work.

He was almost there.

And that was the point at which everything went right straight to hell because out of the thicket came another Hummer straight at him and there was a gunner with a mounted recoilless rifle just waiting for the order. Slaughter knew the weapon well. Back in the days before he earned his Disciples patch when he was a grunt he had shot one. 106mm. It would make scrap metal of the hog and turn Slaughter himself into a greasy smear of gore.

They had him bottled.

He didn’t have a chance to decelerate. He swung the bike to the left and the culvert he hadn’t noticed in the heavy growth came up at him and the bike thumped into it, went up in the air like a rocket and Slaughter was thrown twenty feet, rolling through the grass.