Cannibal Corpse, M/C

“Don’t do it,” Moondog said. As warlord he only cared about the skins of the Disciples.

Slaughter slowed to a stop, sighing, wondering if he was fucking up big this time. Worse than usual.

Give ‘em the benefit of the doubt. They try anything, run ‘em down.

The figure kept waving its arms frantically and even that close, there was no telling if it was a she or a he, though it seemed a better choice as it got closer.

“Man,” Apache Dan said. “Would you look at that…”

The figure’s head looked like a lopsided ball of decayed suet, lumpy and leprous, set with numerous holes like worms had been tunneling through it. You could not tell where the eyes were or if it even had hair, but there was a jagged crevice that might have been called a mouth. The hands it waved over its head were equally as grotesque…gnarled growths of white meat ending in limp digits like gloves with no fingers in them.

“Mutants,” Moondog said. “Fucking mutants.”

Others were gathering now.

Two and three, and then five and six. Finally a dozen with more coming out of the mist all the time, gathering around the Wagon in a mob of maimed, inhuman faces and distorted bodies. Like lepers or the victims of some horrendous atomic fallout, every one of them hunched and deformed, faces like puddled and congealed wax riddled with holes and scabrous sores. Even with the windows closed, you could hear them grunting and squealing as they attempted something like speech.

“C’mon, man,” Fish said. “Get us the fuck out of here.”

Slaughter sat there, gripping the wheel, eyes peeled wide, mouth set in a narrow white line. What held him there, making him stare and making his heart hitch painfully in his chest was just a dumb and senseless mute horror. It sucked the will from him. He could not move, could not think of doing so, some childlike instinct telling him that if he waited like that long enough, like a bird trying to fool a snake by remaining motionless, they would leave the Wagon alone.

“John…shit, let’s go,” Fish said.

“Take it easy,” Moondog told him.

“Take it easy? Look at those fucking things.”

Slaughter let out a long, low sigh. “I wanna see what they’re going to do.”

The figures made no threatening movements, not really, they just stood there in the rolling mist, swaying from side to side, those hideously scarred faces peering through the windows. Some of them gestured, trying to get those in the Wagon to come out, it seemed.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

Slaughter wasn’t exactly uncharitable. He’d decided when he first got the idea of going into the Deadlands that if somebody needed help, he’d help them. Like he had with Rice.

But this…no, the idea of physical contact with one of those abominations was unthinkable. The sight of them was bad enough, let alone coming into close physical proximity with them.

The mutants were not leaving.

They began making loud, slobbering noises, almost as if they were getting excited about something. A few pressed their faces to the plexiglass window ports on the door, leaving sticky strands of something behind. It looked almost like snot. One of them began slapping a diseased hand against the driver’s side window and it actually smashed like a rotting mushroom, leaving a juicy smear on the glass.

They were all getting excited now, thudding their hands against the War Wagon and making those awful sounds.

Well, what’s it gonna be? Slaughter asked himself. You gonna sit here until them ugly pricks find their way in or are you gonna hit that gas pedal and paste ‘em?

There wasn’t much a choice.

Not really.

“Fuck this,” he said.

He revved the engine and blared the horn. The mutants stepped back, began mulling in tight little throngs as if they were trying to figure out what to do. Slaughter threw the Wagon in drive and as it started to roll, something incredible happened. One by one, the mutants began to leave the ground, began to drift upwards like they were filled with helium. Like gas-filled bags they levitated and steadily began to rise.

Slaughter stomped on the accelerator.

The Wagon vaulted forward, knocking aside a few of the mutants that hadn’t as yet begun to ascend. The impact made splashing sounds like they were living water balloons. A few others that were not above the level of the Wagon got battered aside, exploding into rains of fluid and flesh and mulch. Slaughter kept his foot on the pedal and plowed forward, finding the road and staying on it. Part of his mind had shut down now and he felt like he was operating completely on remote control. He turned the wipers on high to brush away the oozing anatomies of the things he had smashed open.

Then the town was falling behind them, consumed by the mist.

The fog did not abate, but the road was open.

“Push it, John!” Fish said. “Get us out of here!”

Pavement now.

Good old blacktop.