Tim Curran - Cannibal Corpse, M/C

In a surprising show of stealth, he stumbled about blindly and then lashed out peripherally to where he thought the food might be. But that damn food just would not cooperate. It drilled him with several wild roundhouse punches but it didn’t get away fast enough. Maggot took hold of it and it was wild and squirming in his grip. He lashed out with a meaty black fist and caught the food in the face and just as he was about to reap the rewards with his teeth, the food got one of its legs behind him and brought it back into the undersides of Maggot’s knees, pushing at the same time and Maggot flipped into the dirt.

The crowd hissed and threw more bottles, stones, anything that wasn’t tied down.

As Maggot rolled in the dirt, trying to right himself, Slaughter kicked him in the head with his motorcycle boot and a great chunk of meat and skull dislodged from the impact.

Maggot shrieked.

The crowd screamed.

Slaughter grabbed up a handful of rocks that made it over the top of the fence and threw them back at the crowd. A couple of them hit and people swore. A few bottles came now. Not just at the fence but over the top of it. One of them glanced off the giant’s head as he stood up uneasily, but he never even noticed.

Maggot charged and Slaughter ducked away from him.

When Maggot came around again, Slaughter jumped up and gave him a drop kick that put the zombie back on his ass. As he clawed around, trying to stand, Slaughter kicked him in the face two and then three times. By then, Maggot’s soft and puffy face was a drooping, liquid mass of excrescence.

But it did not slow him.

He was up and ready for more.

Slaughter knew that all he was doing were delaying tactics. Because without a weapon in his hands, he could beat the giant for hours and it would have little effect other than to tire himself out.

Maggot came around again.

Slaughter backpedaled, his boot rolling on one of the bottles, and he lost his balance. That’s all Maggot needed to gain the advantage. Before Slaughter could get his feet under him properly and his equilibrium in line, Maggot came at him like a fighter in the tenth round going in for the kill. He gave Slaughter a shot to the temple with one fist and then another to the jaw in rapid succession. The zombie was incredibly strong and the second blow sent Slaughter spinning in the dirt. He tried to rise up, his head rioting with stars, but another fist from Maggot put him down.

He lay there, dazed, confused, spitting blood, and wondering if he really had anything left to fight with. He saw it all in perspective in that moment as the crowd cried out for his blood, the hate coming off of them hot and rancid. His entire life spent hitting and being hit, fighting with fists and knives, going down and rising up, taking lives and stomping faces. Where had it gotten him? Here, that’s where. In the dusty hard-packed clay of a cage with this flesh-eating monster while the citizens pressed in like hungry dogs. Civilization. He’d never had much respect for it because he’d always been on the outside, but as he looked at Maggot coming for him yet again and saw the near-orgasmic thrill it gave the animals beyond the wire, he knew if there’d ever been such a thing as civilization—which he doubted—that it was long gone now and the human race had finally taken off its genteel mask of sophistication and refinement. It was midnight at the masquerade and all bets were off. The human race showed its yellow fangs and slobbering mouth, it raised its dirty backside to the world and extended its middle finger. Ha, ha, ha, what a good gag it all was! Us…the human race, pretending to be educated and enlightened, compassionate and charitable, the children of a higher god! What a fucking lark! But that’s all done now. So see us, every man and woman and child, in our unfettered primal fuck-you-and-yours-I-got-mine savage, selfish, simian glory! Look upon the true face of the race: hatred and intolerance, bloodlust and gluttony, the killer ape fresh from the dark jungle flaunting every one of the seven deadly sins, reveling in them and rolling in their iniquity like pigs in shit!

“Welcome home… citizens,” Slaughter said under his breath.

Another Zen moment.

Of all times.

But, as usual, it slowed the flow and stilled the frame and let him see reality not as people wanted it to be but as it truly was. Amazing. All these years he thought citizens were limp-wristed, weak, and wan…but the truth 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, all human beings were inherently 1%ers.

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, ripped.

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.