was that they hid their true natures behind that thin yellowing membrane they called civilization and this is what they really were: animals. By God, all the 1%ers had raged against them all these years never realizing that, under the skin,
But by then, of course, the revelations ceased because Maggot took hold of him. Picking him up off the ground as if he weighed about as much as a feather pillow, lifting him up over his head—that drove the crowd absolutely wild and orgasmic—and throwing him through the air against the fence. The impact was painful and so was the fall that followed. But when Slaughter hit the dirt, he came up grinning, wiping blood from his face, knowing that if he accomplished nothing in this life he must, above all things, totally fuck-up things for the animals out there.
He must piss on their parade and shit in their party punch.
And he saw just how to do it.
Maggot had him again. He lifted him up, pressing him against the fence and Slaughter got his elbow against the zombie’s throat so those teeth couldn’t get at him. Maggot’s tomb-breath was hot and feverish in his face.
“KILLLLLL HIIIIIMMMMMM!” the crowd called out.
“GET HIM, MAGGOT!”
“PULL HIS STOMACH OUT! EAT HIS FUCKING SPLEEN!”
Maggot was worked up into a wild delirium by then. He needed to get his teeth into the food so that he could fill himself with it but the food was strong, the food was cunning, the food fought back with amazing agility. But he would win because he always won in the end…but then the food reached one hand out and dug its clawing fingers into the side of Maggot’s neck where there was a bloated purple-blue pouch of rot and worms. It was soft as the flesh of a rotten peach and those fingers dug in there, tearing at the pouch and ripping it open in a gushing of graveworms and fetid meat. Those claws took hold of something more substantial and yanked, pull, tore,
Maggot screamed as a great chunk of muscle and meat was torn out of his throat. The action made his head slump to the side, made his neck feel like rubber.
He dropped Slaughter.
The crowd booed and hissed; they did not like this.
“C’MON, MAGGOT!”
Maggot, his head bobbling, went down to one knee, fingers trying to halt the flow of ichor and liquefied tissue from his throat. Slaughter came at him and kicked him in the face. That head snapped back on the damaged neck, spraying corpse goo, the left cheekbone shattered to running pulp. And the muscles that held his one good eye in place went flaccid and it popped out of the socket, dangling back and forth.
Maggot made a whining, almost pathetic sound.
He was trying to stand. He finally did…almost. But as he made it up, wobbling from side to side, Slaughter gave his left, and weaker, kneecap a jumping stomp that shattered it and dropped him back down, crippled and moaning.
It was easy then.
Slaughter grabbed one of the rocks and smashed one of the bottles that had been thrown until he had a good shank of jagged glass. He slashed Maggot’s dangling eye with it, blinding him. Then he slashed his throat, two, three, four times as the zombie’s hands sought him out. Slaughter darted in again and slashed it across the opening in the side of the throat he’d made with his fingers. Maggot’s head slumped to his shoulder.
He was almost done now.
The crowd had grown noticeably quiet.
Maggot could barely hold himself up on his knees.
Slaughter slashed at his throat again and again, cutting deeper and deeper. With a barking noise, Maggot rolled over into the dirt. Slaughter jumped on him and cut free the last few ligaments that held his head in place. Using his knee as a brace, his snapped the vertebrae and twisted Maggot’s head free…then he swung it around and around and threw it like discus out into the crowd that screamed and scattered.
They probably would have shot him down at that point.
But the sky had scabbed over purple-and-blue like a contusion and yellow forks of lightning split it open.
The rain began to fall.
And people ran.
Chapter Twenty-Three
By the time the rain started coming down in sheets and turning the ground to rolling mud, Slaughter had climbed up and over the fence of the cage and dropped into the muck on the other side. The rain was cool and cleansing and it felt good as he stood in it, trying to see through it, trying to figure out where some shelter might be. It kept coming down, drenching him, cleaning the stink and remains of zombie gore off of him.
But he knew that, at any moment, the worms might start coming down, too.
He had to find shelter.
In the distance were those encampments and he made for the nearest one, hoping he’d make it and not get shot when he jumped the perimeter. He ran through the mud, slipping and falling, getting up again and then tripping over something and going face-first into the slop. He rose up, the rain washing the muck from his face.
There was a woman there.
She was hugging herself and rocking back and forth on her haunches.
That’s what he tripped over.
“You better get to cover!” he shouted at her, but she just shook her head.
He knew at that moment that every second was precious. He should have run. He should have worried about himself but he knew if he did that, he knew if he abandoned the woman and saved his own skin, he was no better than the citizens who’d cheered on his death in the cage. And he
He grabbed the woman by the arm and pulled her up.
She didn’t fight.
She didn’t do anything.
She just stood there with absolute dejection, wet hair plastered to her face. She was nearly limp as he dragged her along, mumbling something or other about wanting to stay out in the rain and wait for the worms.
He pulled her along, slopping forward to the nearest barbwired encampment. As they came through the wire, a man with an M-16 came out of the gathering darkness. He almost walked right into Slaughter. Slaughter chopped the edge of his hand across the guy’s nose and kicked him in the head when he fell. He grabbed the rifle and pulled the woman into the compound with him. In the rain, no one fired because if there were guns out there, no one could be sure in that deluge who was a Ratbag and who was not. There was a little tin shack at the foot of a hillside that might have been a guard house once.
“C’mon!” Slaughter said, dragging her forward.
When he got her to the shack, he pushed her down in the mud, grabbed the latch on the door and threw it open, jumping to the side. A couple of shots rang out. Some swearing. Some shouting.
Slaughter rolled over the ground through the muck and puddles and came to a rest on his belly, firing indiscriminately into the shack. A man cried out and fell from the doorway and a woman screamed, tried to pull him back in. Slaughter sprayed both of them down and yanked their corpses out, throwing them in the puddles. He pulled the woman in there and latched the door, breathing heavily.
“That was tight,” he said.
The falling rain on the tin shack sounded like popcorn popping. There were a few tiny leaks in the ceiling and a few drops of rain still fell, but it was dry and it was warm. There were dry blankets on a shelf and a couple of chairs against the wall, a candle flickering in the corner.
He wondered how many rocks and bottles the two he had killed had thrown at him. How many jeers and boos they had called out. How badly had they cheered on his death?
