Cannibal Corpse, M/C

As he ate up those miles, knowing that Devil’s Lake was maybe four or five hours away now, he thought about Poe’s poem The Conqueror Worm, and the grim inevitability of death. Funny how he hadn’t thought about that in many, many years until he’d capped that Cannibal Corpse on the highway. Now he couldn’t seem to get it out of his head, and it seemed that the farther west he went, the more it took hold of him and the more it seemed to be saying to him. It was morbid shit, but the Deadlands were a morbid place, and as far as he was concerned he had only scratched the skin.

He passed through a couple of little towns that were deserted and devastated. One of them was burned nearly flat. The others just empty. Not a scavenging dog or a wormboy to be had. Nothing and no one. Outside the last one there was a crossroads and some kind of half-assed pagan altar had been tacked together. He went by it fast so he didn’t get a real good look at it, but what he did see was a heap of bones, big bones, maybe from a cow or a buffalo, lots of feathers and braided cornshocks, a scarecrow up on a crossbar splashed with paint. At least…he thought it was a scarecrow.

Then the country was open prairie save for scrub pine and juniper, clustered silverberry and bushy staghorn verging the road, dogwood along streams and river cuts. The road was meandering, serpentine, left to right and right to left, lots of Day-Glo yellow signs with squiggly arrows on them.

He came around a bend thick with enshrouding juneberry and that’s when the first shot rang out. Even over the roar of the hog he heard it. Then he heard another and another after that and it was about that time as he cut off the highway and into the prairie grass that he realized he’d driven right into a fucking ambush. Maybe if he’d been paying a little closer attention, it might not have happened.

No matter.

In the rearview he could see two pickup trucks with riders in the beds carrying rifles pulling off the road in hot pursuit. They were shooting, and thank God they were no marksmen. The reports of the rifles echoed again and again and a few rounds came close, but not too close. Slaughter was caning the hardtail now, riding fast and aggressively, seesawing this way and that, hoping they couldn’t get a bead on him. The trucks behind him were thumping along into dips and holes and the shooters were barely hanging on. There was no way they’d get a clear shot like that.

Slaughter brought the scoot into a stand of heavy brush, dropped it and cut the M16 free of its bracket. He slipped through the bushes and fired two three-round bursts at the lead vehicle. The first volley went wild, the second hit the pickup, peppering the hood and popping a spiderwebbed hole in the windshield.

That slowed them.

They were shooting wildly now, expending cartridges everywhere. In the distance, an armored APC entered the field. The Red Hand. No doubt of that.

Slaughter got down low and pulled the walkie-talkie out of the inside of his vest. He got Apache Dan right away. “Ambush up ahead,” he said over the box. “Get everyone off the road and into cover.” There was some static, then, “But what about you, bro?” Slaughter thumbed the button. “Get ‘em to cover! They got an APC here, probably heavy machine guns! Get lost!” More static. “Will do, bro. Keep it tight.”

Slaughter came up out of the brush with the M16 again.

He zeroed in on one of the shooters in the back. He missed with his first volley and then popped the guy with the second. He cried out and fell from the bed of the truck and the second pickup couldn’t stop in time: it rolled right over him.

More shooting.

Lots of swearing and shouting.

But the trucks had stopped rolling.

Now was the time. Slaughter jumped on his hog, kicked it into life, and went flying out of the bushes, zigzagging again. More shots. But he rode low and fast, cutting around stands of brush and following a dry ravine until he was out of range. He came out into the grass and there were woods ahead, along a ridgeline. There was a footpath and he aimed the scoot up it. He could still hear the engines of the trucks and the APC, but distant now.

But they would compensate.

He couldn’t give them time to do that.