Cannibal Corpse, M/C

She reached her free arm out at him, scabrous black nails coming within inches of his face and then he jumped back. The zombies were still beating at the other door and he knew it wouldn’t hold. His choice was to go through them or go through this woman.

There was no choice.

He’d have to hack straight through her.

One of her eyes pushed out of its seam of fat and winked open, a glossy ova serrated by red veins. She puckered her lips like she wanted to kiss him, expectorated in her throat, and spat a globby/stringy ball of bile at him. He ducked and it splattered against the wall.

She made a chortling sound as if amused.

She dug her fingers between her legs, tearing out a slimy blob of something that dripped a thin watery red sap.

And threw it.

He ducked away from that one, too, and she chortled again. And, worse, her child made a moist giggling noise that sounded like somebody vomiting.

She took two steps forward and Slaughter took two backward.

She was grinning.

He was shaking.

She made a retching sound and gagged up a ball of mucus and slime and spit it at him. As quickly as he ducked it, another came and then another and then another, spattering against the walls like red, juicing inkblots. She repeated the process two, then three times, wiping maggots from her lips and then tossed her child at him.

Slaughter stepped aside and it hit the floor with rubbery, slick sound like a water balloon. It rolled towards him, mewling. He gave it a kick and it squealed, its hide ruptured and black juice spilling out.

The woman cried out and launched herself forward.

Slaughter came at her, meeting her, bringing the Kukri down with full force and slicing her bulbous head open lengthwise. She let out a scream that was almost too human and sank to her knees, pudgy pulp fingers exploring her cleaved-open head. Brains ran down what remained of her face in a gray, inching slop like something yanked from a corpse with a funerary hook by an Egyptian embalmer. Blood and pus and clotty drainage poured out, then nests of roaches and pockets of silverfish.

She pitched over, trembling.

The wormkid oozed over the floor and Slaughter gave it a kick that caved in its caul and it slithered about like a rent jellyfish.

He hopped over it and out into the day.

There were more out there and he saw them. He shook the shells from the Combat Mag and inserted his last speedloader with a twist of the drum knob.

Six more rounds.

That’s all you got. You better make it count.

By the time he got to his feet and made ready for the killing there were dozens and dozens of them. Like worms sliding free of carrion, they came out of houses and stores, sheds and garages, attics and crawlspaces and weedy drainage ditches. There was a solid mob of them that encircled him now and he knew there was no way, just no way, he could fight through them.

He looked around as they tightened their noose.

Nowhere but up.

If he could shimmy up a raingutter, somehow get up above them onto the roofs, he might stand a chance.

God, the entire rotting population of the town was out there now and then…they parted. They made way for another that stepped into view. A wormgirl. But a special one and even he could see that. She wore a hooded poncho of human skin and a corpse mask which had been stripped from some old hag and carved to look almost totemic.

Slaughter just stared as a voice in his head said, remember this one. She’s important. She’s different than the others. She’s like a death-goddess to them and you can see the authority she commands.

Which was something that was very obvious when two wormkids stepped in front of her, offering themselves to her and she took her expiation, her burnt offerings, her sacrifice of flesh without hesitation. White fingers with black, hooked talons in place of nails lashed out and slit the offerings at her feet. They stood still, embracing the ritual. She yanked out their entrails and looped them around her throat in pink scarves. She lifted her mask precious inches to reveal a face that was fissured like pine bark, a drab yellow-white, a hollow skullish cavern where her nose had been. Lips opened and red scarab beetles ran from her mouth. Her teeth were impossibly lustrous black fangs. She stuffed entrails into her mouth and chewed on them.

Then she pointed a clawed finger right at Slaughter.

There was no mistaking it.

And as she did so, he felt a distant rumbling in the back of his skull as if she were not walking meat like the others but something of a higher, spiritually defiled office and wanted him to know this. Her thoughts speared into his own and made him quiver as what she sent out to him nested happily in the dark nether regions of his brain.

Does thee fare well, biker boy?