Cannibal Corpse, M/C

Somebody had splashed yellow paint on the framework in the form of symbols that were long and slender, triangular and wedge-shaped, oddly cuneiform like ancient Sumerian glyphs. Slaughter had seen them in books when he was in-stir.

And that was not only weird, but frightening to see out here on the dirty backside of North Dakota. It made him think about things he did not want to think about at all.

He hopped back on the hardtail and rolled down the road to Victoria and the closer he got, the more that stench of death came out at him in a thick, cloying mist of putrefaction. He was going to see something here that he would be better off not seeing and he knew it, yet, despite his feelings to the contrary, he rode on in. At first glance, Victoria was just like any other little ghost town: dusty windows, overgrown yards, fallen tree limbs and rusting cars at the curbs. Same old, same old.

Then it changed.

Radically.

There was a wide open sort of grassy field dead center of the town that might have been called a village green in another day and age. There was a monument there, probably to war dead. An old cannon, a few peeling benches, a weed-choked fountain. And…corpses.

This is what made him bring the scoot to a stop.

The green was set with wooden poles upon which were mounted what appeared to be hundreds of corpses. And not old withered things, but fresh cadavers bloating with charnel gases, distended and rubbery with decay, eyes pecked out by birds, faces boiling with worms, throats bearded with corpse flies. Many of those faces, if not all, were contorted and disfigured, mouths yawning wide as if they had died screaming in considerable agony. And Slaughter did not doubt that. For the poles they were set upon were dark with blood and drainage and he had no doubt that these men, women, children had been speared on the poles eight feet in the air while they were still alive. That the poles were sharpened to lethal points there was no doubt, for several corpses had gone soft to the point where they became mucid and mushy, sliding down the shafts until the points jutted from their throats like snapped vertebrae.

…Mere puppets they, who come and go…

Though the stink was black and rotten and nauseating, the air thick and moist with it, he stood there and stared, feeling the necessity to take it all in, to absorb it, to catalog and shelve it for future nightmares and long afternoons of yellow despair. For he would see this always. He would smell it and feel it and know it and remember it and forever it would rot inside of him, turning his core black with hate for the architect of this particular episode of massacre.

…At bidding of vast formless things…

He realized at this point that he was not standing still at all, that he was tottering from one foot to the other like maybe that invasive and purely revolting corpse-gas had made him weak in the knee and funny in the head the way miners got once upon a time in the deep shafts when the air below thinned to a seam of poison.

None of these were zombies, he thought then. If they were, they’d still be kicking. These were living people. Citizens. Innocent people who probably banded together here in Victoria for protection…only something got to them. Maybe the wormboys but probably something far worse. It got to them, sharpened up these stakes, then took them out here, one by one, and speared them through the crotches, probably tittering with cold, black laughter as they screamed and bled and writhed.

The idea of it almost put Slaughter to his knees.

This was a badness, an atrocity, far beyond the living dead. And the most awful part of it was that he could still feel it in the air, the pain and horror and absolute terror of what had happened. The atmosphere was rank with suffering, soured by depravity.

But what did it mean?

Because, honestly, it had to mean something. Maybe he was worn out (he was) and maybe his mind wasn’t exactly riding smoothly along its rails these days (it wasn’t), but he was seeing a pattern. Old Black Hat was behind it or involved in it right to the core, as was the Hag. It was all part of something that made the wormboys themselves seem almost pedestrian in comparison.

But what?

Oh, don’t be so stupid, Johnny. You know. You thought it the moment you saw it. Now just unlock your jaw and say it aloud.

So he did. Standing there with a burning cigarette in his trembling fingers, he gave it voice and spoke it unto the wind: “Sacrifice.”

Because, yes, that’s what this was and the only thing it could really, truly, possibly be. These people weren’t killed out of anything as mundane as human sadism or even for food. They were murdered to appease something. Expiation. Burnt fucking offerings laid at the thorny feet of some nameless, pagan, malefic god of graveyards, gallows, and body pits.

That’s what this was.

Blowing smoke out through his nostrils and nearly swooning with the smell of carrion, he kept staring at those violated bodies, perhaps seeking truths or secrets in their insect-ravaged faces. Buzzards were walking around, spreading their darkened wings, tearing at bits of flesh that had sloughed off the corpses, their scaly heads glistening with corpse-slime and grave-waste. Crows were cawing, perched on shoulders, picking away at holes in faces, digging untouched eyeballs from hollow-vaulted sockets.

It was too much.

Slaughter turned away…or tried to. But the best he could manage was a slow-shuffling backward gait.

He found he could not think clearly any longer.

Forcing himself to stand still so he did not fall down, making himself drag cool and easy off the cigarette in his fingers, he felt the sun above, felt it burning on the back of his neck and tossing his own shadow at his feet as the innumerable dead things about him continued to swell and green and cry tears of subterranean slime. He felt at that moment, as he listened to the buzz of flies and the popping mucid sounds the corpses made, that he had never been quite so exhausted in his life.

That’s when he heard someone humming.

Humming.

It was insane, but he heard it. It filled him with a strange, dreamlike sense of terror. He dropped his cigarette, which tasted like death anyway, and pulled the Combat Mag.

Humming? No, they were singing.

And Slaughter could hear the song very clearly. A childhood ditty he had long forgotten about:

“The hearse goes by, the hearse goes by.

“No one laughs when the hearse goes by…”

He looked across the host of impaled corpses but it wasn’t them, of course. It was coming from the other side. He moved around the edge of the green, beneath the shadows of the impaled and saw a naked man crouching there. An old man who looked much like a living corpse himself. He was on his knees, facing Slaughter, swaying his head from side to side as he sang his dirge:

“They wrap you up in a bloody sheet, and bury you under six feet deep.

“They put you in a big black box, and cover you up with dirt and rocks.

“And all goes well for about a week, and then the coffin begins to leak…”

Slaughter went over to him cautiously.

The old man looked at him. He had no eyes. The skin had been peeled from his face and there was only a red-crusted deathmask there now. Though he had no eyes with which to see, he looked right at Slaughter and sang,

“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout.

“They eat your eyes, they eat your nose, they eat the jelly between your