“And it’s gonna be the best time these machineheads have had in many years,” he said under his breath.
So like a knife drawn from gut to sternum, they cut north through the desolation of Minnesota, jumping off the I and onto 10 which would take them northwest across the state line and to Fargo, and into the darkest bowels of the Dakotas where the shit would get deep and dangerous. In St. Cloud, which looked to Slaughter like the set from some post-apocalyptic movie with its shattered buildings, burned-out neighborhoods, and skeletons sitting in cars, they crossed the Mississippi and it looked pretty much the same on the other bank, not a single WELCOME TO THE DEADLANDS sign to be had. Though, interestingly, someone had taken some articulated skeletons and withered brown cadavers that were almost skeletons and rigged them up on crossbars like scarecrows. There were several dozen of them. Along with a few crudely-painted skull-and-crossbone signs, this was the warning to the curious.
The only warning there would be.
As they passed out of St. Cloud they saw the dead wandering about through the ruins. Some of them stood around as the pack went by, more curious than anything.
About ten miles outside of the city they came upon a roadhouse with the amusing title of ‘The Royal Head’. Parked outside were about a dozen bikes, most of them rusty and spattered with mud. Slaughter got on the box and told Fish to pull over at the bend in the road.
“Could be Cannibal Corpse,” he told Moondog, who agreed. “Let’s go kick ass or get our asses kicked. A good dust-up will get the boys feeling like men again.”
“Sure as shit.”
There weren’t too many questions as Moondog passed out the pistol-gripped sawed-off 12-gauge pumps. They took the weapons happily.
“We go in quiet,” Moondog informed them, clipping a pair of white phosphorus grenades to his leather club vest. “Then we kill anything we find.”
The Disciples grinned.
“I’m smelling me some shiteaters,” Fish said, which was one of the many derogatory names the Disciples had for members of Cannibal Corpse.
“Let’s light this shit up then,” Apache Dan said.
Slaughter led the way through the stunted trees and across the gravel lot, his boys spread out behind him like commandos. There was absolutely no activity in or around the joint, just that hazy blue sky with the sun burning down like a hot yellow coin.
Slaughter motioned for the others to hang back as he went up to the door and tried it. It was open. He gave the Disciples the signal and they crept forward, tensing with anticipation to a man.
“We come across Coffin or Reptile, remember: those pricks are mine and mine alone,” he whispered to the others and they understood perfectly. It would have been a boon if any of them bagged Reptile or Coffin, but Slaughter wanted those two just a little bit more. The way he looked at it, the three Disciples they wasted had been done so on his watch.
He opened the door a crack and listened for activity.
There was nothing.
Either the place was empty, there was an ambush waiting, or the Disciples had caught the owners of those bikes with their pants down. He opened it a bit more and a gassy stink of putrefaction came out. Nothing new there, but it gave him ideas.
“All right,” he told Moondog. “Follow me in.”
Moondog gave him a look that plainly said he didn’t like it, that they didn’t know what they were stepping in here. That he, as warlord and sergeant-at-arms, advised a little reconnoitering first—there could be fifty wormboys out back for all they knew.
But Slaughter shook his head. The look in his eyes said all the warlord needed to know: These boys have been in-stir too long, man, they need to learn how to fight as one again, as a club.
“Let’s go,” Slaughter told him.
Even with their boots on they were quiet as they moved through the barroom, stepping quietly on the plank floors. Inside, it was a mess… wreckage and trash scattered everywhere. And bones. They were strewn about, heaped in the corners. Human bones that were gnawed and scraped, smashed and broken open for their marrow. The stink of death was strong, but it didn’t come from the remains. Instead, it emanated from the forms lying about like it was siesta time: six dead ones sprawled on the bar top, on the floor, under tables.
And as Slaughter looked at them—faces like seamed leather masks missing eyes and noses, lips shriveled back to reveal jutting teeth—he had to wonder, and not for the first time, if they went dormant like this because they needed to or if it was the worms that needed some down time. No matter. A few were face-down and they wore the colors of Cannibal Corpse.
“Shiteaters, alright,” Jumbo said.
“Do ‘em,” Slaughter said.
Under Moondog’s direction it was carried out calmly, efficiently, and slowly. They each chose a wormboy and put the barrels of their shotguns to the heads of the zombies. It was unbelievably simple and that’s why Slaughter knew it was going to go to shit, and right about the time the Disciples pulled their respective triggers and sent the deadheads back to hell, it hit the fan.
The door behind the bar flew open and at least ten wormboys came charging out. And what a sight they were. Their faces were raging liquiform epidemics of leprous rot… mucid, dripping, fluids oozing from ulcerous sores. Eyes like rotten eggs spilling tears of slime, mouths filled with undulant worm follicles. They came shambling and stumbling, creeping forth to engulf the intruders.
Slaughter was expecting it.
When they came out, he brought up his 12-gauge pump and took out the first Cannibal Corpse with close-range scattershot that blew the zombie’s head apart into a kaleidoscopic eruption of pink, red, black, and gray ribbons that splashed against the others and sprayed the walls in a dripping meat Rorschach blot.
The other Cannibals went right over the top of the flopping husk and Slaughter didn’t have to tell his boys to wade in.
Moondog reacted first.
As one of the wormboys reached for him, he smashed the barrel of his shotgun into its head and kicked it swiftly in the sternum, knocking it aside and giving him the time to blow the face off another pitted skull and get a glancing shot into the advancing horde before three of them crested over him like a rogue wave and he went down fighting with them.
Slaughter ran at them firing and working the pump on his gun.
Apache Dan and Shanks both got off a couple rounds but a really big Cannibal—a real wagonload of crawling carrion—got hold of Irish and lifted him up like he was stuffed with pillow down and threw him at the wall ten feet away. And maybe threw is not nearly descriptive enough, because Irish was fucking launched like cannonshot, going right over the top of the bar and crashing into a Budweiser mirror and coming down in an explosion of glass as his descent upset about a dozen dusty bottles of hootch.
Jumbo, who was about the size of an Abrams tank, grabbed a downed and quite overanxious Cannibal Corpse with a face like a ball of suet by the ankles and proceeded to use him as a bat, swinging him from side to side and sweeping wormboys out of his path so he could get to Irish before the zombies could. When he cleared the way, he swung around again and again like a man throwing a discus and let fly his wormboy right through the window, taking out the neon Leinenkugel’s sign in the process.
Not wanting to fire buckshot with the Disciples so close at hand, Slaughter used the pistol grip of his weapon like a club, battering it into the face of a Cannibal until he went down, then ducking just in time as another deadhead swung a femur at his head. Slaughter moved in and hammered the zombie in the ribs with his left fist until he felt something give in there. Then he darted back, pulled the Kukri from its sheath and started slashing and hacking like a man felling sugarcane. He took off arms, a head, opened two bellies, then brought the blade down overhead, bisecting a Cannibal’s head from cranium to chin like a fork of white-hot lightning splitting a dead oak.