Tim Curran: Cannibal Corpse, M/C

Baiting him. That’s all this was. It could be nothing more. The death of Moondog came as no real surprise, of course. The only thing he didn’t know and would never know is if Moondog couldn’t get out of the War Wagon in time or if he just decided to ride it straight into hell. He favored the latter because that was exactly how Moondog would have wanted it to end.

“The thing I love about you, Johnny, is that you’re so fucking predictable,” Coffin said, uttering that horrible laugh, his long pale fingers lightly brushing the bulging pockets and sacs of his face, all of which seemed to be moving. His eyes were pink, juicy meat. “I wanted you here on the roof so I had Reptile do Apache, knowing that you’d have to come. You’d have to come to right the wrong against your club. Ha, ha. I love that about you, Johnny. That misplaced, convoluted sense of honor. I knew you’d come here to this place and you did. I knew you’d bring meaty sacrifices of your own Disciples and goddamned if you didn’t.”

Slaughter kept breathing evenly and deeply.

He could not let Coffin scent what he was feeling, because there was terror, great shivering amounts of terror. He knew at that moment in the greater scheme of things that everything that had led up to this moment had been neither accidental nor coincidental; it was planned. All planned out. Probably from the moment he killed those two cops in New Castle. He had been baited every step of the way and he had taken the bait offered. Taken it? No, he had jumped for it, sinking his teeth into it, enjoying every bite. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Coffin had wanted not only him but offerings of the very things that meant the most to him: his brother Disciples.

That was the definition of true sacrifice: the offering of that which you loved best and by your own hand.

Slaughter thought of the dream.

That hag-face rising up and then that voice, that terrible, terrible voice speaking prophecy on the dead wind: We’re waiting for you, Disciple, for you have been named. We’re all waiting for you, she had said. Out here. Out in the west. Out in the Deadlands and cemeteries and the tombs of men, in narrow boxes and seeping charnel depths, we wait for you. Come unto us, Disciple. Bring us our burnt offerings and our racks of meat prepared by thine own hand—

Yes, it was there and it always had been.

The answers he sought were most simple: he was a puppet carefully manipulated and his brother Disciples were nothing but fucking offerings to this obscenity, to Coffin/Nemesis/Black Hat/Leviathan.

“I got a little present for you, Johnny.”

A group of Cannibal Corpse zombies dragged a man out. He was handcuffed, gagged, ankles tied together. They dumped him at Coffin’s feet. It was Jumbo. He was gagged, his eyes wild and pissed-off.

Slaughter tried to break free but he was held firmly.

“I want you to watch how Disciples die, Johnny,” Coffin said. “I want you to see your last boy flip patches.”

The zombies dragged Jumbo to his feet and he looked through the crowd at Slaughter and there was no hatred or recrimination in his eyes. There was only a look that signified friendship. We ride hard and we die hard, John. That’s why they call us the Devil’s Disciples. Slaughter felt something breaking open inside him. A blackness filled his guts and clouded his skull and it was the blinding blackness of sheer hate.

As Jumbo was held, Coffin pulled a looping red worm from one of the holes in his face and dangled it over Jumbo’s lips. Jumbo thrashed his head back and forth, a sweat breaking out on his face, but finally they held him so tightly he could not move so much as an inch.

“Welcome to Cannibal Corpse,” Coffin said and dropped the worm on Jumbo’s face, grinning as it slid up his nostril.

They dropped Jumbo and he convulsed on the ground for some time. Before he disappeared back into the greedy hands of the crowding undead, Coffin had one more indignity for him. He pulled out a knife and slit the colors off his leather vest. The violation and degradation were complete.

Or were they?

For now there was no knife in Coffin’s hand. There was a flat-black branding iron, the branding head of which glowed red.

Slaughter wanted to scream, but there was no point.

The Cannibals yanked Jumbo’s shirt and vest up until a nice wide expanse of back was revealed. The flesh sizzled as the branding iron burnt deep and sure. And then Jumbo was marked:

“Man, Johnny,” Coffin said. “I can’t wait to brand you. You have no idea how much I’m gonna enjoy it.”

Regardless of what evil possessed Coffin now, he was still a Cannibal Corpse at his dark core and what he had done, right in front of the president of the mother chapter of the Devil’s Disciples, was basically ritual defilement.

Slaughter knew it had all been staged to weaken him and break him down on some essential level. And it had done that, all right, at least for a few moments. Now the hate was back and it owned him, it clung to his back like a monkey, it squatted in his belly in a hot mass of boiling tar. It was a grinning, toothy goblin in his head and it was hungry. It was very hungry.

Coffin held a large leather book in his hand now.

Slaughter knew it was The Book of Hell. There was no mistaking it. “Too bad about Jumbo,” Coffin said. “But his name is written in here. As is yours , Johnny K. Slaughter.”

“Any time you’re ready, maggot.”

Coffin laughed. “Ah, yes. You know what comes next, don’t you, Johnny? Oh yes, you know. Now we fight. But not with guns, we fight with blades. Because hasn’t that always been your secret death wish fantasy?”

Slaughter could not deny that. He had dreamed of killing Coffin countless times and it had never, ever been with anything as impersonal as a gun. It was always with a knife. And each and every time he had gutted him and let him a die a slow, agonizing death.

“You wanna kill me, Johnny? Kill me? Kiiiiiillllll me? Yes, that’s good. That’s the way it needs to happen. I knew I could count on you. Right from the beginning, I knew.” Coffin laughed. “So predictable. But that’s good and that’s fine. You’re maybe the only man left who can kill me, Johnny. The others are afraid. But not you. Never you.”

“So let’s get to it.”

“You dreams are mine, Johnny,” Coffin told him, still uttering that terrible laugh as if he knew the punchline to a wonderful joke. “I’m going to gut you, Disciple. Then I’m going to eat your still-beating heart. Then I’ll take your soul.”

Slaughter was released as Coffin produced a machete.

Pulling the Kukri from its sheath, Slaughter said, “If you could have taken it, you would have by now… maggot.”

Then it wasn’t Coffin facing him but Black Hat. He smiled like a well-polished skull. “Well played, biker boy. Indeed. Well played.”

Then it was Coffin again and it began.

They circled each other like blood-hungry animals in a cage and that’s essentially what they were, each scoping out the other as experienced fighters will do, looking for weak spots, advantages. Slaughter saw many with Coffin because the dead man was barely held together by catgut and wire. But that did not mean he was not dangerous because he was, he most certainly was.

Then Coffin moved.

He went after Slaughter with a couple of quick slashes, feigning moves more than anything else to draw him out, but Slaughter didn’t bite. He’d taken too much bait by that point. He would take no more. He moved around and around as quick as he could, going faster and faster, trying to force Coffin into something and it worked: Coffin let out a war cry and came at him, slashing wildly. Slaughter barely got out of the way of the blade. He ducked and darted, then swung the Gurkha knife. He caught Coffin across the ribs and freed some wriggling parasites but that was about it.