Cannibal Corpse, M/C

They came at him and he inched forward to meet them.

The world was soundless, a dead vacuum in some distorted cul-de-sac of space and time. He watched them come to kill him, to slobber on his brains or heave blood-slicked resurrection worms down his throat, and he saw his death and did not fear it, but accepted it, saw the smooth transition and the calming crystal purity of abandoning the flesh, for once it was gone and you were divorced of it…no more pain or suffering or torment or worry or fear. A butterfly taking wing from a pupa, breaking free and gliding in the warm summer night of eternity—

Click.

That Zen moment, so fleeting and existential, was gone and the physical world pushed back in. He saw those dead riders as they saw him and he was just John Slaughter, outlaw biker and criminal hardcase, barbarian on an iron horse, his belly filled with acid and his soul smoldering with rage and hate and kill-happy enthusiasm.

When the Cannibals were twenty feet from him, he squeezed the trigger on the M16 and, lookee there, these deadheads were capable of learning because as soon as the rounds started to fly two of them broke free, cutting away from the wolfpack. But the others were strafed by slugs that made them hop and jerk, made one of them fall right out of the saddle and strike his head on the pavement with such velocity that it exploded on impact, spraying a gore-soup of rot and filth—and one surprised worm—over the blacktop.

But one or more of those rounds chewed into a gas tank and there was a resounding varoom! as it went up in a fiery eruption, spreading a curtain of flame fifteen feet in every direction, letting loose a burst of flechette shrapnel which were the remains of the gas tank itself.

Burning, four Cannibals lost control of their rides and skidded out, but one came right at Slaughter with a toothy mortuary grin and that was because he held a hatchet in one claw-hand and, despite the fact that one of his eyes was a yellow gummy soup and the other was swinging free by the stalk, he was bringing it forward in a perfect arc that would have taken Slaughter’s head right off.

But he ducked.

The hatchet slashed empty air.

The forward momentum and the wild swing threw the Cannibal off balance and he lost control, the bike going one way and he going the other. Slaughter never saw that, for as he cut hard to the left to avoid another Cannibal bearing down on him, he found the gravel at the edge of the road and lost control himself. His scoot skidded out and he was tossed mercifully into the long grass and then down into the ditch amongst some desiccated cattails that broke apart in a storm of soft fuzz.

The first thing he did was pull the bluesteel Combat Mag in one quick motion like a gunfighter unleathering his Navy six. Just in time, too, for a big hulking Cannibal Corpse whose face was more maggots than face stepped up to the edge of the ditch, grinning, his flat black eyes filled with secret triumph. Well, what do we got here? But what he got instead of easy meat for the chewing was the business end of the Mag and then Slaughter squeezed the trigger. The Mag boomed and a .357 round went right through the zombie’s forehead, coring him, sliding through his skull like a drill bit and taking most of what was inside out the back of his head. In fact, when the slug went through, the impact broke his skull part and the top of his head jumped three inches like a hat blown up in the wind and came right down in a splash of red/black slime and the zombie folded right up.

Of course, the rest of the Disciples were hardly standing still during this time.

Apache Dan and Shanks were still on their bikes, jousting with the Cannibals, Fish was on the road shooting zombies off their mounts and Moondog had his machete out and was busy decapitating the downed Cannibals. What he didn’t see was a huge walking slab of carrion descend on him with a lead pipe, but Jumbo did. By that time he was on his sweet ‘54 Panhead like a knight that realized he’d almost missed the fun. He roared into the fray and when the big zombie was bearing down on Moondog, he popped a wheelie and slammed the front tire right into the side of the corpse’s head.

They both went down and just as quickly, they were both up, going at it bare fisted.

Slaughter climbed out of the ditch and saw what he wanted right away: the Cannibal Corpse with the hatchet. Among the other patches on his leather vest was one that read: VICE-PRESIDENT. St. Louis chapter and not Kansas City, but still…Vice-Prez.

He saw Slaughter.

Slaughter saw him.

They charged at each other, the Cannibal holding up his hatchet and Slaughter unsheathing his Kukri. It would have been so much easier to pop the zombie with the Combat Mag, but that’s not what Slaughter wanted. Sometimes, in the thick of battle with so much indiscriminate, impersonal killing going on with guns, there was a call to the knife. A need to swing and taste blood. Smell it. Feel it. To watch your prey go down dead. Maybe it was an instinctual thing, but he had felt it before.

The Cannibal came at him with a high-pitched war cry that was somewhere between a howling wolf and a mad dog. Black ribbons of slime flew from his mouth and a slop of maggots was expelled from his left nostril.

“Come on!” Slaughter called out at him. “Bring your gamey ass on!”

The Cannibal vice-prez came in with wild slashing motions of the hatchet which, although not controlled, were fast and vicious and much more powerful than Slaughter expected from a deadhead. He got under them and around them and lashed out with his left foot, catching the vice-prez in the back and throwing him forward.

He brought the Gurkha knife around, the eighteen-inch blade just missing the back of the zombie’s neck. The vice-prez whirled back around, making a chattering/cackling sound and lunged.

Slaughter dropped back, slid on the gravel and went on his ass.

The zombie struck out with the hatchet. Missed. Brought it down again and Slaughter rolled away, scrambling to his feet.

The vice-prez swung his hatchet.

Slaughter swung his Kukri.

The blades clattered in mid-air and Slaughter felt the numbing shock of it right up to his elbow. He danced back as the hatchet came again and then again. He spun around and slashed open the zombie’s chest, and it would have been a near-fatal cut for a living man but to this deadhead it was just a flesh wound.

He got out of the way of the hatchet, slashed at the zombie’s arm, made contact, peeling free a chunk of greening meat. And the hatchet came within inches of his face but the swing threw the vice-prez off balance and Slaughter leaped. He brought the Gurkha knife down with full-force into the zombie’s face and it sounded like an axe splitting black oak.

The zombie cried out, its last good eye shattered in a splash of yellow serum. A rancid blood poured from his split face, a thick and curdy sort of blood that was squirming with graveworms. He swung the hatchet and Slaughter ducked under it and brought the Kukri into the back of his neck. The zombie gagged out clots of tissue in a vomit gush of bile and blood.

He dropped the hatchet.

Slaughter slashed him across the throat, took one hand off at the wrist, then brought the Gurkha blade to bear, slitting off the top of the vice-prez’s head. He tottered weakly, barely staying up, screaming out in rage and pure hate, then he began to come apart as if the damage done to him was the catalyst that broke him apart from the inside out. He went to his knees, face hanging by threads of gore, and Slaughter smelled one violent odor after another—flesh-rot, formaldehyde, dry hay, hot bacterial decay—and the zombie crashed into a heap of dusty, moth-eaten, dank-smelling debris. Then goo spurted out…black blood and creamy white marrow, yellow globs of liquid fat, and lastly, a fountaining eruption of maggots that steamed and sizzled and went to chalky grave- paste.

The skull had broken apart with the rest…but the jaws were still intact and the teeth chattered like they were cold.

Slaughter kicked them away.

The dead were all over the highway. None had escaped. Several of the corpses were still burning, letting off greasy plumes of black smoke that carried a sharp, nauseating stink of burnt hair. The bikes of the Disciples were scattered about. Several of the Cannibal Corpse bikes were burning along with their riders. The remains of the zombies were splashed over the road.

Jumbo and Moondog were squatted over Irish who was torn up and glistening with blood. He wasn’t moving. Shanks was standing there, just staring down at him. Fish was walking around with a dazed look on his blood- streaked face, stomping the worms that crawled out of the dead zombies with his motorcycle boots. Apache Dan saw Slaughter coming, the gore-dripping Kukri still in his fist. He looked over at him, the