“Yeah. I been called that.”
“You’re the one that mixed it up with some of us in Wisconsin. Killed a few of us.”
“So now you’ve got me.”
“Now I’ve got you.” He whispered something to one of the other men. “Question is: what do we do with you?”
“What use am I to you?”
“None that I can see. Of course, we could use a guy like you. You could join up with us.”
“The Hand? No, I’m already patched-in with a different club. I don’t flip patches for no one.”
“I suppose I could kill you.”
“Figured you’d get to that.”
“Uh-huh.” Valdez stroked his chin. “We could torture you… but why expend the energy on a booger-eater like you? You’re strong. You’d make a good slave. A good camp boy to do all the shit nobody else likes. But then we’d have to feed you. And, sooner or later, a guy like you would start killing us to get free.”
It was quite a quandary, all right. Slaughter was amazed at how quickly the Red Hand grapevine worked. They must have been watching for him. Now they had him. Valdez was playing games. Slaughter had killed some Ratbags, they wanted payback. They were going to punish him and he knew it, but Valdez was playing his mindgames, acting like he didn’t know what he was going to do when he’d probably made up his mind long ago.
“See, Slaughter, the thing is that I’ve been pretty much ordered to execute you. That comes from higher up, as a favor to other Red Hand units that you put the hurt on. It’s a brotherhood thing… and you understand brotherhood, do you not?”
Slaughter said nothing. He didn’t even bother smiling at the absurdity of such a thing. Brotherhood? Brotherhood? What did a weasel like this squeeze of shit know about brotherhood? What could he possibly know about standing with your brothers shoulder to shoulder and fighting and killing, taking lives and giving them, being splashed with blood and going down only to rise again by the hands of your brothers? This guy didn’t know shit. A fucking marionette. A clown.
Valdez was going on about how tough it was to be in his position. Like anyone else, he claimed, he had orders to follow from higher up. But then, on the other hand, he had to interpret those orders and make them work in a practical fashion. So, yes, he was told to punch Slaughter’s ticket as a favor to his brothers of the Red Hand (Slaughter tried not to laugh at that), but if he did that he had to do it in such a way that he would not be wasting manpower and resources and his little community would actually get some benefit from it.
“So you see my problem, do you not?”
“It’s tough being on the top.”
Valdez ignored the sarcasm. “What to do, what to do?”
“Just put a fucking bullet in my head and be done with it,” Slaughter suggested. “How much manpower does that take?”
Valdez smiled. He was beginning to like this biker. As opposed to so many of his own men, this guy was absolutely fearless. “Well, that’s a point well taken, my friend. But honestly… that’s so simple and cold-blooded it nearly offends me.”
Slaughter just hung there, his arms numb from the wrists to the shoulder. All he wanted at that moment was to be cut free. If that meant he got a bullet, then so be it. He was starting to think this entire ride was a big zero. Nothing but trouble.
“Wait… I think I have a solution,” Valdez said. He motioned to a couple of his bully boys and they came over, flashing knives. They sliced Slaughter’s bonds and he fell to the ground. It took him a good five minutes to get the feeling back in his arms. But Valdez was a patient man. He had nothing but time. Now that Slaughter was free, the other Ratbags had their weapons on him. They didn’t trust him and Slaughter had to respect that. Because he had been beginning to think how easy it would have been to take a knife from one of these stooges. Just a few seconds would be all he would need. Grab the nearest one, stomp his kneecap and smash his Adam’s apple, take his knife and put it against Valdez’s throat. By the time the other limp dicks got their weapons up, he’d already have their boss hostage.
But they weren’t that dumb.
Once he got his blood going again, Valdez dropped him a canteen and he drank down the whole thing. Better. It swept that fuzzy disorientation out of his skull.
“Better?” Valdez asked.
“Sure.”
“Anything else?”
“I could handle a steak.”
“So could I, my friend. Here. We found these on you. Enjoy.” He tossed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter into the dirt. Slaughter shrugged, picked them up and had a few easy drags. “Okay,” he said. “So what do you got in mind?”
“I’ve come up with perfect solution to our problem. One that will take care of my dilemma, entertain my men, and allow you the dignity of dying like a man.”
One of his bully boys chuckled.
Slaughter waited for it while he finished his smoke. All this high drama for nothing. Valdez had it all planned from the moment they strung him up. Why all the theatrics? Just get to it already.
“You see,” Valdez said, “we are a free-ranging group. Our job is to collect up anything and anyone we can find. Food, medicine, weapons, supplies of any sort. But it’s hard work. The farther east we range the more dangerous it is. The Army has a kill-on-sight order as far as we’re concerned. We’ve had some nasty engagements. My men grow tired. Bored. Restless. They need entertainment.”
“And I’m it?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Slaughter turned his back on them and had a good long piss. After that, he felt pretty human again save for the stink of zombie gore spattered all over him. But he supposed a shower was out of the question.
“Now that you’re freshened up,” Valdez said, “you’ll take a walk with these gentlemen.”
“Where to?”
Valdez ignored him. “Put him in the cage,” he said. “And tell Benny to bring up Maggot.”
They led Slaughter through the compound at gunpoint. It was a large, sprawling place that looked like part of an old Army base. As it stood, from what he could see of it, it looked pretty indefensible. There were several small encampments enclosed by sandbags and spooled barbwire, but there were great openings in the ramparts that you could have driven a tank through. The wire was old and rusting, the sandbags leaking. A good force could have overrun the entire thing in minutes. He saw scrub forest beyond the perimeter in one direction and fields of high yellow grasses in the other. Perfect cover to mount an attack. As they led him on, he saw that the ground was pitted with bomb craters.
They’re putting you in the cage… what do you think of that?
But he didn’t think much at all about it.
He let himself go cool and easy as he always did before a good action or gang fight. It was the only way to do it. Breathe slowly, rest your muscles, stretch your joints. Don’t tense up until you have to. Conserve energy.
The troubling thing, he figured, was that the farther they led him through the compound the more riders they picked up. People began to follow them, not just soldiers but women, too, until there was a crowd of at least thirty people with more pressing in all the time. They led him to a “cage” that was about thirty square feet enclosed by walls of high chainlink fence. It looked like it might have been a dog pen at one time.
They shoved him through the doorway.
The crowd ringed the cage.
When they started to part like the Red Sea, Slaughter figured there was probably a very good reason for it and he wasn’t wrong on that: a giant of a man came lumbering along. He was closer to seven feet than six, a huge black zombie with a face of mush. Quilts of decay were threaded into his purple-mottled flesh. He was absolutely gigantic, his body perforated with wounds that oozed a clear slime, and Slaughter figured he weighed well over three-hundred pounds. He was led by five soldiers.