Cannibal Corpse, M/C

moments to see if anyone was on the watch for him.

Nothing.

“All right,” he said under his breath. “Let’s light this shit up.”

Crouching again, he moved from cover to the silo, stepping easy to the barn and waiting, his heart thumping in his throat. But it wasn’t fear. It was exhilaration. It was excitement. Man, it was like the old days creeping up on a Cannibal Corpse clubhouse to throw some lead around and bust some heads.

He edged around the barn, smelling the pure Wisconsin air. Sweet and fresh. You had to love it. There. He saw a guy standing out near the back door having a smoke. Just a kid. He was dressed in Army-issue camo fatigues which marked him either as a member of the Red Hand of Freedom, a paramilitary terrorist sect that had splintered from the regular Army during the Outbreak, or just some dipshit hanging with another G.I. Joe combo.

Didn’t much matter; Slaughter was going to take him out.

Kid just stood there, leaning up against the wall. He had a rifle with him, looked like an old M-1. Like him, it was just leaning there. Kid wasn’t much of a sentry and Slaughter figured he hadn’t trained down in Fort Bragg.

Slaughter moved around his blindside and slipped up behind him and it was so fucking easy he thought for one moment maybe it was a trap and the kid was laid out as bait. The kid just kept smoking, not a care in the world. He made a slight grunting noise when Slaughter quickly took him by the hair, yanked his head back and put the SS dagger against his carotid.

“Move and I slit your throat,” he told him.

The kid didn’t move other than the shaking that went through his limbs. Slaughter slid the knife against his Adam’s apple, wondering if he should just do him or get some intel from him. He decided on the latter. Kid couldn’t have been more than nineteen, just a cherry. He had green eyes like a crystal deep pond. Naive. Innocent. Slaughter figured if it hadn’t been for the Outbreak, kid would probably have been the high school track star with those long legs of his. But fate had changed all that. No track, no school, no copping a feel down Mary Jane’s pants in the back of his Camaro.

Every time he made to open his mouth, Slaughter pressed the knife up a little tighter.

“C’mon…man,” the kid finally breathed, “don’t kill me…please don’t kill me.”

“Tell me what happened here.”

“I don’t know…ah…”

Slaughter pressed the dagger in until it tasted blood, just piercing the skin of the kid’s throat.

“You get one more chance.”

“We…we came down the road, pulled in here and this crazy bitch started shooting at us, screaming names at us.”

Slaughter smiled. Yeah, that was Dirty Mary, all right.

“Who are we?”

“Red Hand, man. If you’re smart you’ll just let me go and get out of here. There’s some pretty bad dudes in that house.”

“Ratbags,” Slaughter said, which was the general term for members of the Red Hand of Freedom.

The kid scowled.

“They having their fun with the woman?”

“No…not yet. But I think they’re going to take her with.”

“No shit?”

“Like I said, man…we’re the Hand, we’re fucking Red Hand. You don’t wanna fuck with us.”

“Who’s your leader? What’s the puke’s name?”

“Snake,” the kid said. “They call him Snake.”

Slaughter considered it. “How many?”

“Five.”

“Six with you.”

“Sure.”

Slaughter already had the kid figured for a screamer, but he decided out of the goodness of his black little heart that he was going to be compassionate today.

“Okay, kid. I’m going to let you live. When I take the knife away, you run. You run out into the field. You run up that hillside. You keep running and running and you never come back. That sound fair?”

“Sure.”

Slaughter sighed, pulled the knife away and right away the kid scrambled towards the door, calling, “Mike! Rich! He—”

But by then Slaughter had him and he slit his throat with one quick slash. The kid hit the dirt, gagging out blood and trembling in the grass. He didn’t tremble long.

Slaughter took his rifle and moved along the side of the house, he ducked under windows until he began to hear voices. They were in the living room and Dirty Mary was really giving it to them. Slaughter peeked through the corner of the window. She was in a chair. There was blood on her face like she’d been hit. The Ratbags were gathered around her, but not too close. Mary’s shirt was torn and one of her breasts was hanging out. Not that such a thing would bother her, he knew. She liked to flash them like a cop flashed his tin. She had a lot of stories about getting thrown out of bars for showing them around so people could appreciate the inking she had on them.

Yeah, she was some kind of girl.

The Ratbags were probably thinking on raping her, but they didn’t know Dirty Mary. She liked to hand it out like candy at Halloween, you didn’t have to take it by force. But if they did, if those sorry shits put the moves on her…man, were they in for something. In close, Dirty Mary was a real animal with her nails and teeth. And that wasn’t even counting the razor she kept in her belt.

Slaughter decided he’d let it play out a bit, see what happened.

He figured it would be good.

Chapter Three

He’d met Dirty Mary at a roadhouse outside Milwaukee called Angelz, a hardcore biker bar where the juke played renegade country and hard rock and the clientele were all patched members of various clubs who wore their colors proudly. Most of the clubs had been decimated by the Outbreak and the resultant blood wars, but there were still some pretty mean cliques in there—the Outlaws and Highwaymen, Grim Reapers and Blood Brothers, even a few Vagos from California that had headed east to avoid the trouble west of the Mississippi.

The beauty of Angelz was that it was solid road warriors and street-eaters, no RUBs—Rich Urban Bikers—or weekenders on their Honda or Yamaha rice rockets. No wannabes or pretenders, only the real thing: blood members of various clubs along with their prospects, supporters, and hang-arounds. Lots of tough biker bitches and plenty of sheep making the scene, flashing their titties and shaking their asses. Nothing else. The police didn’t bother going there because these days they had enough trouble without trying to roust seventy or eighty juiced-up bikers.

Slaughter had gone in there, picking his way west, needing to get away from the citizens and the John Laws which had his number and wanted to put him away. He wore his Devil’s Disciples colors and he knew a lot of people from the other clubs. The booze was flowing and the boys were snorting coke and meth right off the bar and challenging anyone to mention the fact. Slaughter chatted with some old friends, got his beak wet, and watched the shit hit the fan because the moment he walked in there, he knew it would…and it did.

Hard to say whose buttons got pushed first, but a Vago and a Reaper got into a punch-up and pretty soon a dozen others were drawn into it, and it became increasingly brutal as knives and shanks, chains and broken bottles found their way into hands. Pretty soon you had blood and broken faces, stab wounds and fractured limbs, bleeding skulls and boys spitting out their teeth.

Slaughter stayed out of it for the most part.

That was until some 300 pound maniac from the Blood Brothers—eyes like white diamonds from all the meth