The guy screamed.
Sure, it was bloody murder.
He knocked Mary aside and fell back, his dick nearly bitten in half, his hands trying to stem the flow of blood. Mary came out with that razor and sliced another guy that tried to take hold of her, laying his hands open and almost blinding still another.
But then they had her.
“Shit,” Slaughter said, crushing out his smoke. “She must be losing her touch.”
He went around front, kicked open the door, and stepped right in with the Combat Mag in his hand. It was a big, blue steel piece of death and they saw it. Saw how their own guns—three M16s and two hunting rifles—were not within easy reach.
“Who the fuck are you?” one of them said.
Dirty Mary had been beaten down now and the men had knives in their hands. What was coming for her next wouldn’t be pleasant. The dude she’d bitten was writhing on the floor, bleeding all over the damn place. He was not screaming now, but moaning and sobbing, and it was such a pathetic spectacle that Slaughter almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“Name’s Slaughter,” he said. “Mary? Get up.”
“Fuck took you so long, you prick?”
“Got here soon as I could.”
Dirty Mary’s brown eyes were simmering like hot molasses. She wiped blood from her lips with the back of her hand. “Oh, really? I bet you were standing outside looking in through the window, you goddamn asshole. It would be so like you to think this was all a joke. Think it was funny that these limp-dicks were raping me.”
“Didn’t look much like rape to me.”
“You asshole.”
“How’d that shit taste?” he asked her and when she made to come at him with more castration in mind, he waved the gun at her. He put the Mag back on the Ratbags. “Wait a minute…were you fine citizens
The biggest of them, the guy who’d been next on the train, managed a smile that was thin as a paper cut. “We weren’t raping anyone. She volunteered.”
“THE FUCK I DID!” Dirty Mary shouted at him. “DON’T YOU BELIEVE THAT SHIT, SLAUGHTER! THEY FORCED ME!”
Slaughter nodded. “Sure. Now grab their guns, Mary.”
She did.
“Now throw them out the door. Eject the magazines and throw the bullets into the bushes.”
She did that, too.
“Now we can be civilized and talk business.” Slaughter smiled at them. “First off, who said you could mistreat my old lady?”
“Fuck are you talking about?”
“Her, I’m talking about
“Hey, fuck you, Slaughter,” Dirty Mary said, still making no attempt to cover up her breasts. “I’m not for sale.”
“You’re always for sale, woman.”
She glared at him. “I’ll kill you. I swear, I’ll fucking kill you.”
Slaughter believed her. That was one of the reasons he made her throw the guns out the door. There were things in life that didn’t go together real well like open flame and dynamite…or Dirty Mary and guns. You had to keep them apart in order to keep the body count low.
The Ratbags just watched him. What kind of game was this? Was he fucking with them? He wasn’t really going to sell them the woman, now was he?
They didn’t know Slaughter was all. They didn’t know the kind of shit a man like him was capable of. That he had once sold his old lady to another biker for a dollar and then bought her back for a pack of cigarettes. That’s the kind of guy he was.
Slaughter turned his attention to the bleeding man on the floor. “Your friend…that Snake?”
“How’d you know?”
“The kid out back told me.” Slaughter looked down at the dickless wonder groaning and moaning. “Sorry, Snake, but I think you’re gonna need a new name.”
With their leader so unfortunately incapacitated, the Ratbags just didn’t know what they should do. The biker and the woman were some kind of couple apparently. The biker had a gun and he looked plenty mean.
“How much will you give me for her?” he asked them.
Dirty Mary sneered at him. “You cheap sonofabitch—”
“Shut up,” Slaughter told her.
He smiled at the Ratbags and they were too stunned by what he was saying to do anything but stare. That’s because they didn’t who they were dealing with. They didn’t know how badly he was itching for a fight, how badly he needed some action, and how badly he wanted to lay down some hurt. Above all, they didn’t know that Slaughter was a hardcore 1%er who rode fast and punched hard, always leaving a trail of broken hearts and bodies in his wake.
But they were about to find out.
He looked at the gun in his hand. “This bothering you boys?” He almost handed it to Dirty Mary, but he thought better of it and slid it back in the canvas holster. “Now we’re even. Now we can talk business. We can discuss this like civilized men, citizens, or we can drop the gloves and let the blood flow. Your choice. Entirely your choice.”
Now that the gun was out of sight and out of mind, the Ratbags were feeling better about themselves. Their old arrogance returned and they felt like men again—all except Snake. They had knives and they were going to use them. First on the biker. And then on his woman. Slaughter let them come in. Like Dirty Mary, he had baited them and now he was going to spring the trap. The Ratbags didn’t know all the gang wars and prison fights he’d been in, how he liked to reel his enemies in like this before he beat ‘em down.
He waited.
They waited.
He was waiting for the big guy to pull his knife because he would. It was only a matter of time. He was the biggest and he looked to be second-in-command so he would have to make a move or he would lose face with the others. Slaughter was looking forward to it. All he needed was to get that big piece of shit in close and then he’d break his arms, smash his nose to pulp, thumb out his eyes, and puncture his solar plexus, leave him rolling in the dirt.
“Well?” he said. “Like Dirty Mary said, either show your dicks or put them away.”
Mary hissed at him.
And then it started.
The biggest one came first, as expected.
He wasn’t an experienced knife fighter. Instead of slashing out with circular thrusts and timed straight jabs, he lunged forward, bringing his blade—a Marine K-bar—down in an overhead arc. Slaughter pivoted at the last second, snatched the guy’s wrist and twisted it fast and fierce, breaking it, and when the guy pitched forward he kneed him in the face and dropped him.
Things happened fast then.
As he put down the big guy, one of them got up behind him and slipped an arm around his throat and another charged in with a hunting knife. Slaughter jumped up as the Ratbag clutched him and kicked the one with the knife in the stomach. The guy let out a whoosh of air and went down at Dirty Mary’s feet and then she had the knife. He looked up at her, wide-eyed and dazed, the wind knocked out of him, and she started stabbing him, going at it in a real kinetic, kill-happy frenzy. She slashed him across the face and jabbed him in the throat, the arm, then sank the blade between his shoulder blades, riding it down and twisting it while the guy screamed out in pain.
