Silence.
“He’s always like that, sir.”
“He hasn’t spoken?”
“He never speaks, sir.”
“Shit. All right. Get his ass out of there.”
“Now, sir?”
“No, a week from fucking Tuesday, you meathead. Yes,
And that’s what they did. They lowered a sling and Slaughter just laid there like he was too sick to move because that was his latest trump card. A couple of lowly privates climbed down into that filthy shit-stinking hole and lifted him onto the sling, bitching and complaining the entire time. When he was brought up, they had medics with a stretcher waiting. He wanted to scream for joy at being out in the world again. He saw that he was in some sort of military compound, Quonset huts and drab gray buildings, lots of jarheads scurrying about.
“Slaughter?”
The voice belonged to some round little man in khakis who did not look military at all. More like a CEO with his white coiffed hair and shiny pink cheeks: overfed and overpaid.
“I could use a shower,” Slaughter said.
He took two showers as a matter of fact. The medics gave him cream for the insect bites, then they put him in a room with a bed. They gave him fatigues to wear, fried chicken and potatoes to eat, an apple crumb for dessert, and ice cold water to drink. When he was done with that he ordered two cheeseburgers and a chocolate shake. He wanted to keep eating but he’d figured he’d burst so he took a nap.
When he woke up, his clothes were waiting for him: clean, freshly folded. His black jeans, scuffed motorcycle boots, and even his rags, his colors. He pulled them on and was amazed that his club vest had withstood two washings in as many weeks and not fallen apart.
He found his cigarettes on the nightstand and smoked.
Then he waited for it.
About an hour later, two MPs came for him. “All right,” one of them said, “come with us. It’s time.”
“Time for what, friend?”
“You’ll see, dipshit.”
They took him to the round little man who said his name was Colonel Brightman. Brightman made no claim of being in the Army or Marines or any of that, and Slaughter pegged him right off as a spook. He had that look about him, like he might suck the blood out of his own mother. Slaughter sat in a metal folding chair across from him and listened to him go on about it all, about the threat to the country and the awful possibility that if the worm rains weren’t contained, the Deadlands would reach clear across to the Atlantic.
“Something has to be done,” he said. “Something…decisive.”
“How did you find me?” Slaughter finally asked.
“We took in some boys from the Red Hand. They said some biker had torn them a new asshole at a farmhouse in St. Croix County. We tied that in with reports of some hellraiser wearing the colors of the Devil’s Disciples burning a path west. After that, it was easy enough. We knew you were with Rice at his farm. You were seen.”
“So you set up a little net?”
“That’s it.” But Brightman was not interested in any of that and he waved it away. “As I was saying, we need decisive action on the worm rain issue. Something has to be done to save the country.”
Slaughter lapsed into silence again. If Brightman wanted him to jump up and salute and wave his fucking flag, he had the wrong guy.
“It’s not by accident we brought you in, Slaughter.”
“I was kind of figuring that.”
“And it wasn’t by accident that we threw you in that hole out there.”
“I figured that, too.”
Brightman just stared at him, dabbing sweat from his face with a hankie. “Did you?”
Slaughter allowed himself a sarcastic laugh. “You think I was born yesterday, citizen? I know how shit works. You were trying to break me down, trying to get me begging for release. And you did that because you wanted me to be desperate, to get me down on your terms so you could spring it on me and I’d bite like a good little soldier.”
“Spring what?”
Slaughter pulled off his cigarette. “Yeah, what exactly.” He shook his head. “All right, citizen. Let’s play cat- and-mouse until you get the nuts to tell me what’s on your mind. Let’s play it like that.”
“You killed two cops in New Castle, PA,” Brightman said then. “You murdered an innocent woman.”
“If you say so.”
“Quit the shit, Slaughter. You left your goddamn prints all over everything, and you did it specifically so that everyone would know what happens to enemies of the Devil’s Disciples. Am I right on this?”
“Damn right,” Slaughter said. “Those cops murdered my brother Neb in cold blood. I saw it happen. He gave ‘em no shit, and he wasn’t armed. They pulled their pieces and put him down like a fucking dog, so I returned the favor. Two less shit-eating cops in the world. So what? And that woman? Not so fucking innocent, citizen. She rolled over. She dropped a dime on Neb. She fingered him to the cops and that brought about his death. She deserved what she got.”
“She deserved to be…gutted?”
“You’re fucking right she did, citizen. The lowest of the low: a rat.”
Brightman just sighed and shook his head. “I’m trying real hard here, Slaughter, to see you as a stand-up guy with some twisted, convoluted sense of underworld honor and not some dirty bloodthirsty animal.”
Slaughter just laughed. “You don’t know shit.”
“Don’t I?”
“No, you don’t. Just as you have your laws, citizen, we’ve got ours. You’re good to us, we’re better to you. You shit on us, we bury you alive. Simple as that.”
“Is it?”
“That’s right,” Slaughter said. “I’m your best friend or your worst enemy, but there’s nothing in- between.”
Brightman finally sat down. He did not look amused by any of it. “I talked with some gang experts back east, and they told me some things. They told me who you are and
Slaughter smiled. Brightman
“Okay, citizen. You got me. So show me the cheese and see if I nibble.”
Brightman acted like he had no idea what the biker was talking about. He had a thick file on Slaughter, and it was pretty well-thumbed by the looks of it. “You’ve been a bad boy, Slaughter. Your sheet is longer than my left arm. Twelve county lockups on minor offenses ranging from disturbing the piece to street brawls to possession of a deadly weapon. Two years in SCI Frackville for aggravated assault. You split a guy’s head open with…let’s see here…” he paged through the file “…a
