Cannibal Corpse, M/C

He rumbled up a tree-lined hill, waiting for a break in the foliage because when it opened he could see the farm down there in the hollow and he would breathe easier. He always breathed easier when he saw it. Like home sweet home, dig it, made him feel relaxed. That was, until he got in the door and Mary and he started going at it, dosing each other on hate and circling one another like mad dogs.

Jesus.

Slaughter shook his head. What kind of fucking life is that? What kind of shit is that to be—

What the hell?

He was grannying the hog in low gear, moving slow and easy, when the trees parted and the bushes squatted down and he could see little home sweet home down there. Barn, silo, farmhouse, all knitted up in yellow late-summer fields like a shawl.

He brought the hog to a stop, then rolled it beneath the overhanging branches of a big oak. He hopped off and peered down into the hollow. There were two pick-up trucks parked down there, and when he’d left three hours before to eat some road there had been no trucks of any sort. So either Dirty Mary had made some new friends—Slaughter found that hard to believe—or she was in a spot.

He figured the latter.

He went back to his bike and loaded the Combat Mag, slid it in the Army web belt holster, and strapped it on. He scanned the farmyard below, figuring how he was going to do this. He should have been scared and he knew it. But with the life he’d led and how goddamned pent-up and bored he’d been for weeks now, this was escape. This was a kick. This was getting into the shit and getting in deep.

He moved down the hillside smoothly, going down into a crouch and crab-crawling his way through the yellow grass of the orchard until he got amongst the old crabapple trees and got himself some camo. He waited a few moments to see if anyone was on the watch for him.

Nothing.

“All right,” he said under his breath. “Let’s light this shit up.”

Crouching again, he moved from cover to the silo, stepping easy to the barn and waiting, his heart thumping in his throat. But it wasn’t fear. It was exhilaration. It was excitement. Man, it was like the old days creeping up on a Cannibal Corpse clubhouse to throw some lead around and bust some heads.

He edged around the barn, smelling the pure Wisconsin air. Sweet and fresh. You had to love it. There. He saw a guy standing out near the back door having a smoke. Just a kid. He was dressed in Army-issue camo fatigues which marked him either as a member of the Red Hand of Freedom, a paramilitary terrorist sect that had splintered from the regular Army during the Outbreak, or just some dipshit hanging with another G.I. Joe combo.

Didn’t much matter; Slaughter was going to take him out.

Kid just stood there, leaning up against the wall. He had a rifle with him, looked like an old M-1. Like him, it was just leaning there. Kid wasn’t much of a sentry and Slaughter figured he hadn’t trained down in Fort Bragg.

Slaughter moved around his blindside and slipped up behind him and it was so fucking easy he thought for one moment maybe it was a trap and the kid was laid out as bait. The kid just kept smoking, not a care in the world. He made a slight grunting noise when Slaughter quickly took him by the hair, yanked his head back and put the SS dagger against his carotid.

“Move and I slit your throat,” he told him.

The kid didn’t move other than the shaking that went through his limbs. Slaughter slid the knife against his Adam’s apple, wondering if he should just do him or get some intel from him. He decided on the latter. Kid couldn’t have been more than nineteen, just a cherry. He had green eyes like a crystal deep pond. Naïve. Innocent. Slaughter figured if it hadn’t been for the Outbreak, kid would probably have been the high school track star with those long legs of his. But fate had changed all that. No track, no school, no copping a feel down Mary Jane’s pants in the back of his Camaro.

Every time he made to open his mouth, Slaughter pressed the knife up a little tighter.

“C’mon…man,” the kid finally breathed, “don’t kill me…please don’t kill me.”

“Tell me what happened here.”

“I don’t know…ah…”

Slaughter pressed the dagger in until it tasted blood, just piercing the skin of the kid’s throat.

“You get one more chance.”

“We…we came down the road, pulled in here and this crazy bitch started shooting at us, screaming names at us.”

Slaughter smiled. Yeah, that was Dirty Mary, all right.

“Who are we?”

“Red Hand, man. If you’re smart you’ll just let me go and get out of here. There’s some pretty bad dudes in that house.”

“Ratbags,” Slaughter said, which was the general term for members of the Red Hand of Freedom.

The kid scowled.

“They having their fun with the woman?”

“No…not yet. But I think they’re going to take her with.”

“No shit?”

“Like I said, man…we’re the Hand, we’re fucking Red Hand. You don’t wanna fuck with us.”

“Who’s your leader? What’s the puke’s name?”