Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

XV

Shivering, aching and cramped from the cold, his wet clothes clinging to him, it took Mortimer nearly an hour to pick his way along the steep bank until he stood almost directly below the blazing train. He stood in its heat, let the warmth spread through him.

Had Tyler been aboard? Bill? He shuddered to think of them burning alive.

But there had been no fuel. The train had been powered by muscle. What had caused the fire? Or who? The same people who’d sabotaged the track. An ambush. He jerked his head around, scanning the tree line. Nobody.

He had to get ankle-deep in the water again to make his way to the other side of the bridge. He found crates busted open. The train had been looted. His eyes raked the water and the far bank. No bodies. Where were the muscle guys? Had Mortimer been the only one thrown clear? The bodies had been taken.

Cannibals.

A shiver crawled up Mortimer’s spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

Turn around and walk the other way.

But he didn’t. At the very least he owed Bill. He had to know, had to see. He started walking upriver, keeping close to the bank, clueless where else to go.

Soon he’d have to stop and build a fire and damn if anyone saw. Hypothermia was fast becoming a bigger worry than cannibals. But Mortimer had no matches, and if he did, they’d be soaked. He could rub sticks together until doomsday and never get a fire. Everything near the river was snow-soaked and muddy.

Why had he come down from the mountain? There was no point in continuing. He’d lost the Uzi. The police special was at the bottom of the river. He couldn’t rescue Bill even if he was still alive. All of Mortimer’s possessions were lost, even the Armageddon dollars.

He’d have traded every last Armageddon dollar he had for dry clothes and matches.

A cup of hot coffee.

He marched on. Lie down and sleep. Go ahead, his body said. Slip into that final dream without thought or pain. The idea was so seductive. That he could give up, curl into a ball and simply drift off forever.

A hamburger would have been nice.

Through the dense trees up the bank, Mortimer glimpsed a flicker of orange. He jogged toward it, wove a crooked path among the trees. The fire was farther than it had seemed at first, and Mortimer soon slowed to a ragged walk, stumbling in the dark, tree branches scraping his face, roots catching his toe.

He tripped, fell face-first flat into cold leaves and mud.

Mortimer sighed, heaved himself up on his elbows and summoned the energy to get to his feet.

He heard the scream and went flat again.

The second scream was worse than the first, a panicked, terrified, agonized howl.

Mortimer could not make himself move forward. Petrified. The screams came again, a series of hopeless cries mixed with indistinguishable pleading and sobbing, each wail turning his spine into jelly.

Even worse than the screams was the chanting, low and guttural. Mortimer couldn’t quite make it out, but it seemed to be the same word over and over again. He had to know, had to find out. Even as he told himself Run, he found himself slinking forward, crawling on his belly like a lizard, slithering through the dead leaves and the sparse undergrowth.

It seemed to go on for hours, the hideous screaming and chanting, Mortimer’s edging closer an inch at a time. It must have only been twenty minutes.

A lifetime of pain and evil could be packed into twenty minutes.

Mortimer was close enough now to hear the many voices chanting.

“Meat. Meat. Meat.”

Turn around. Run, you dumb son of a bitch.

“Meat. Meat. MEAT!”

Another scream punctuated the chant. The crowd paused to raise an ugly, jeering cheer before resuming. “Meat. Meat. Meat.”

Mortimer flattened himself against a fallen tree. Raise your head and look. You wanted to see this. Look.

He raised his head but suddenly squeezed his eyes shut tight. He could feel the heat from the bonfire on his face. Open your eyes. Do it. Look now. Do it.

Mortimer opened his eyes.

It took him a long moment to completely realize the scope of the horror.

He looked into a large compound, a group of Appalachian savages swaying and pumping fists around a big bonfire. Meat meat meat. They all wore ragged denim, many in overalls. Beat-up hats pulled tight on greasy heads. Some macabre version of the Hat-fields and McCoys. Some held rifles, but many others clutched crude spears with heads of jagged metal.

Just to the left of the fire, several figures had been tied to poles stuck in the ground. Like a captured safari party in a bad Tarzan movie. He saw two of the musclemen and Tyler. Bill was there too. Even at this distance, Mortimer recognized their terror-stricken expressions. They waited to be eaten.

Much closer to the fire, a table made out of a large wooden door had been propped up at a forty-five-degree angle. One of the muscle guys had been tied spread-eagle on the table. A splash of red gore stained the table where his left leg used to be. He stared vacantly into the night sky. Catatonic.

Mortimer realized he was watching the whole scene through some sort of makeshift fence only three feet away. A closer examination turned his stomach. The fence had been constructed of old, bleached bones. Toothy skulls capped the posts. How many gruesome meals did those bones represent?

A loud voice snapped Mortimer’s attention back to the bonfire.

A tall figure, gaunt, hands raised like some savage priest’s. Dark paint around his eyes, making him look like a raccoon. “We have conquered the train that dares invade the clan’s territory!”

A cheer from the crowd.

Mortimer propped himself up on the fallen tree, craned his neck for a closer look.

The priest wore a large necklace of finger bones. A wide black belt from which hung a rusting cavalry saber. High black boots. A black cape, probably looted from some costume shop. He’d have looked almost comic if not for the glint of fire reflecting in his demon eyes.

The priest’s voice carried over all. “We are the clan, and we absorb the strength of our enemies through blood. Nothing is forbidden us!”

Another cheer.

“Bring forth the butcher! Take the other leg!”

Wild cheering, followed by the chant. Meat meat meat!

A hairy brute emerged from the crowd. A short man but wide, a bulging fireplug. He wore a stained leather apron, various knives and cleavers dangling from his belt. An orange Tennessee Volunteers cap. He clutched a gleaming hacksaw in his thick hand and approached the muscle guy strapped to the table.

Dear God…But Mortimer couldn’t turn away. He watched, transfixed.

The butcher bent over the muscle guy’s leg, prodded it with thick, stubby fingers, nodding to himself, egged on by the chanting crowd. The muscle guy still stared ahead at nothing, deep in his horror-induced trance. The butcher set the saw’s teeth against flesh, high up the thigh.

Meat meat meat!

The saw blade bit deep, the butcher leaning all of his weight into it. Bright blood fountained. The muscle guy was yanked back to reality, screamed and thrashed against his bonds, eyes bulging. The butcher was relentless, sawing back and forth with long, hard strokes. Blood sprayed his apron and face.

Mortimer turned away and vomited.

At last, the screams stopped. Perhaps the muscle guy had passed out, or maybe he’d simply died from shock and blood loss. Mortimer poked his head up again, fearing what he might see.

The legless muscleman twitched and drooled, eyes hollow, seeing nothing. The butcher carried the leg to a small group of cannibals who already had the other leg lashed to a spit attached to two long poles. Once they’d attached the other leg, the cannibals held the legs over the fire. The smell of roasting human almost made Mortimer throw up again.

“Break out the fermented blood,” the priest shouted. “Tonight we party!”

The most enthusiastic cheer yet. A group of cannibals produced instruments: mandolin, guitar, harmonica and bongo drum. They played-something between bluegrass and adult contemporary. Some danced around the fire. When the meat had cooked, portions of leg were sliced off and passed around. Lips smacked. The butcher brought the arms and torso to be cooked.

Mortimer went flat on his belly again. He couldn’t watch any longer. He crawled around the camp trying to edge closer to the prisoners. The thought he could free his friends was laughable. But he had to see, had to be able to tell himself in the deep dark of future restless nights that he’d tried.

The music, the hellish orange of the bonfire, the chanting and dancing and occasional scream all mixed to form a portrait of hell that would have made Dante piss his pants.

Mortimer belly-crawled until the cold and wet and the long night sapped all that was left of him. He curled against a stump, clapped his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to keep out the nauseating racket of the vile barbecue only a hundred feet away. He lay exhausted and defeated. Sorry, Bill.

Sleep took him finally, and he dreamed of unspeakable things.