Plebs

by Jim Goforth

  A horrible burning sensation, the unpalatable taste of bile coursed through his mouth.

  He would have murdered for a few tiny drops of water to appease the awful feeling; how ironic he'd been so comprehensively drenched in the stuff earlier on.

  Desiree hadn't moved from where she'd landed, her arms stiff and open handed at her sides.

  She hadn't spoken, hadn't uttered a word.

  Briefly Corey wondered if she'd suffered a massive heart attack and died in her upright position.

  Feeling as though his legs would be too shaky to support him if he tried to stand up on them, he crawled through the grass to where she kneeled.

  Only when he was alongside her did she move, turning her head to look at him.

  Her eyes were awash with tears, her beautiful face puffy and shiny with the tears which streaked down them, dripping off her chin.

  "Oh Corey," she gasped, her voice barely more than a choking whisper. "They've killed them all."

  With his free hand Corey reached for one of hers, clasping it and squeezing tight.

  He didn't have the words which could comfort her, he didn't have any words.

  They remained frozen like that, surrounded by the ghastly collage of burning materials, tormented by the nightmare vision of the torched camp and its crisped incinerated inhabitants.

  Corey didn't want to look at it anymore, but short of walking away into the woods it was unavoidable.

  Here a blackened human skull was identifiable, elsewhere whole human frames lay stretched out in the giant funeral pyre.

  How had it happened, so speedily, so effectively destructive?

  Corey wanted to cry, to wail like a desperate infant, but his whole body felt dry and absolutely numb.

  He felt as if Desiree could start pricking him with pins and he would fail to feel any sensation at all, let alone any pain.

  There was nothing wrong with his hearing though; his ears pricked up as did the hairs on the back of his neck as he heard the rustling and crunching of someone-or something-approaching through the woods behind them.

  Reluctantly breaking contact with the inconsolable Desiree, Corey swiveled around with his hands full of pistol, aiming where he thought the nearing sound was issuing from.

  He hefted himself up onto his knees, holding the gun steady in a two handed grip, sweeping it along the front of the trees ready to blast at any sign of motion.

  He couldn't see anything, or anybody moving behind those trees; the rustling noises had ceased.

  "Don't shoot man!" A voice well known to him rang out. "It's just us!"

  Corey lowered the gun, pointing its deadly nose towards the ground.

  From behind the trees came Lee and Tasha, their faces aghast.

  They trailed down the gentle slope to the clearing, Tasha limping much worse than before, leaning heavily on Lee for support.

  Tasha looked as though she had the wind savagely punched out of her as she gazed in sheer dismay at the devastation of what had been her home.

  Lee looked terrified and as he stared a little more intently the expression on his face grew into one of revulsion mixed with more than a fraction of nausea.

  He immediately recoiled, stumbling backwards, tripped and landed with a solid bone jarring thud on his butt.

  He lay sprawled on his back in the short grass of the slight gradient, trying to speak, but coming up with nothing coherent, merely incomprehensible gibberish.

  To Corey it sounded as if his fear stricken friend had just mastered a foreign language.

  After his instant reaction to the horrific scene Corey now found that a great cushion of shock enveloped him, numbing his senses, rendering him incapable of doing little but go into survival autopilot.

  The one silver lining Corey could find in these dismal grey thunderclouds of terror was that prior to this night, faced with these sorts of odds, Corey Somerset wouldn't have hung around long enough to see the dust settle.

  He would have abandoned everybody, hightailed it out of there and run for his life, not stopping to look back until he was safe and tucked up in his own bed.

  Not this Corey, the new and improved model.

  This one was stronger, better, adaptable, resilient and strangely attractive to beguiling females such as Desiree.

  Corey liked the new Corey.

  He didn't particularly like the dreadful circumstances which birthed the new Corey.

  With that reflected upon Corey wasn't certain who needed his support most.

  Desiree still remained where he'd left her to point his gun at the newcomers.

  "All gone," Desiree was murmuring a quiet monologue to herself. "They're all gone, all gone, all gone."

  Lee lay flat on his back, his eyes wide with shock and terror, gazing bleakly at the sky, still giving voice to his alien tongue.

  Tasha stood at the bottom of the small slope about three or four feet behind Desiree, her eyes blank, her hands clenched in tight fists of despair.

  Before Corey could decide who he should go to -probably Desiree- Tasha flung back her head, threw her fists high in the air and gave voice to an unearthly bloodcurdling scream which encompassed rage, grief and terror all in the one ear shattering blast.

  The intensity and the volume of the scream sent chills racing along Corey’s spine, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand to attention again.

  He visibly winced; certain Tasha's unexpected outburst was going to draw the hordes of Plebs back to their blackened murder grounds.

  "Shit Tash," he murmured, though he doubted his words reached her. "We don't want any more attention."

  The scream drew some attention, but it wasn't the Plebs who came to see them.

  Over on the far side of the smoking wreckage of the women’s camp where the woods were thicker, composed of towering stands of trees and shrubs, movement stirred.

  Since that was the direction Corey had been looking, out over the smoldering black tragedy he noticed motion amongst the trees immediately, a motion not caused by breeze, but by something moving in the woods there and he felt the fearful pangs of terror begin to gnaw on his insides.

  "Fuck, ah fuck, guys, get up! Now!"

  He stepped up behind Desiree, yanking at her shoulder with one hand while the other, loaded with pistol, he kept trained on the area he'd seen movement amidst the trees.

  "Get up babe," he urged Desiree. To Lee and Tasha, "Guys get back behind me, back in the woods. They're coming."

  They were coming, but they weren't the Plebs.

  From the woods on the far side of the incinerated camp came a closely bunched party of seven or eight individuals.

  At the fore of this group stalked two women, side by side, both of them carrying shotguns in tight two handed grips.

  The woman to the right was the star tattooed Melissa, the one to the left was the mischievous redhead Blaise.

  Melissa's beautiful face was set in a purposeful expression, more grim and angry than it had ever been before, her dark eyes smoldering more than the entire burnt out campsite.

  Her black hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail, along with her star tattoo around her eye she had what looked like black paint in a long stripe down her opposing cheekbone.

  She was still dressed in her short skirt and boots, but wore no jacket, only a black top which scarcely covered her abundant breasts leaving her stomach bare.

  Upon that stomach she had a dark hand print emblazoned on the skin.

  She wore a thick belt above the skirt which was more of a strip for the purpose of holding weapons.

  At least two visible knives sheathed in leather holsters hung from it.

  Blaise too, walking to Melissa's left also appeared to be heavily armed.

  Along with the shotgun which she wielded alarmingly comfortably, she had a holstered pistol on her hip and a knife strapped to the inside of her left thigh.

  She was also quite scantily dressed in short shorts and what looked like a black bikini top.
/>   One thing she wasn't wearing was the cheeky smile she was known for.

  Corey recognised one of the other girls back behind the two leaders as Rachel, the lass with the multi-coloured hair, but he didn't know any of the others.

  Of Raven and her twin there was no sign.

  Corey's heart thundered with a combination of relief and joy because he knew how much better this was going to make Desiree feel, laying eyes upon the faces of her friends, people she assumed had died in the murderous blaze.

  Desiree sprang up so fast when she saw who had come from the woods that she almost toppled over again.

  Corey supported her with his free hand, lowering his pistol and Desiree flung her arms around him, planting a great big kiss on his lips.

  "They're alive!" She rejoiced, kissing him again, her face still wet with the tears of despair she'd shed only moments earlier. "Corey, they're alive! I can't believe it!"

  Corey couldn't hardly believe it himself. How did this handful of women manage to evade what must have been a hellish inferno when it was obvious that the majority of their fellows had perished?

  Considering the cavalcade of firepower the troupe of girls were bearing why hadn't they turned the guns on their attackers?

  Or did they not possess the weapons at that particular junction in time?

  Too many questions were flooding Corey’s mind.

  He was glad to see that Melissa and co escaped the tragedy relatively unscathed, but how they did perplexed him.

  He guessed explanation time would happen soon as the bunch of gun toting gals skirted around the edges of the blackened burnt out charnel camp, walking the inside perimeter of the tormented clearing.

  He noticed that with the exception of Melissa and Blaise, none of the approaching women deigned to even glance at the wreckage of what had been their homes and the gruesome corpses amidst it.

  A couple of them, including Rachel, looked truly tormented and sickened by the whole thing and that was completely understandable.

  Blaise raised a hand in greeting and for a fleeting moment as she gazed upon Corey and the others Melissa managed to crack a smile.

  She seemed as relieved to see them alive as they were to see her and her followers.

  Tasha and Desiree both waved back, Desiree looking as though she wanted to call out.

  She didn't; instead she wrapped both arms about Corey's ribs and hugged him tight, waiting for her friends to arrive.

  Tasha looked as though another shock might simply send her stark raving mad.

  She'd been on a constant roller coaster ride of emotions, most of them bad, no doubt ever since she originally became separated from the others, long before Corey, Lee and Tim even emerged in the picture.

  She stood behind Corey and Desiree, unable to commit to one single expression.

  Joy, confusion, consternation all chased each other across her visage.

  Corey had to admit that Desiree had done a rather decent job of cleaning Tasha up before the Pleb tribe returned to their house.

  Though she had a swollen knot above her left eye and a slash down her cheek she looked almost normal compared to the fright mask it had been when first witnessed by Corey.

  Lee was the one wearing the fright mask now; his face was still dirty from the earth in his hiding spot outside the Pleb abode.

  With his dreadlocked hair carrying pieces of leaf and grass he looked like some Mother Earth worshipping hippy hobbit, reinforced by the fact that he was still lying prone on the ground, albeit now propped up on his elbows.

  He didn't look anything but bemused as the eight strong party lead by Melissa and Blaise navigated around the treacherous clearing.

  CHAPTER 13

  Corey sensed that Desiree wanted to run up and greet the newcomers, as overcome with elation as she was, but he was glad she didn't.

  While she remained here with him she was in the comfort of his arms, and that felt very natural and good to him, as natural and good as it could have been standing on the fringes of a burnt out village.

  As Corey and his cohorts watched Melissa and Blaise make their progress around the blackened ruins, Corey wondered why the majority of fire seemed to have already burned out.

  True, the entire populace was razed to the ground and really there was little else to burn, but the fact that it destroyed everything so suddenly and was now in its final throes of life perturbed Corey somewhat.

  Surely a fire of its intensity would have created flying sparks to jump up into the trees around the clearing and spread the blaze comprehensively throughout the woods.

  It made Corey think that the act of setting fire to the village had been thoroughly planned out, cruelly calculated and what was more, completely controlled until it burned all it was intended to and nothing less.

  Judging from the various encounters Corey already faced with the obtuse Plebs, it seemed to be an endeavour far beyond their primitive minds.

  Still, Desiree had told him that the brutish ogres were much more cunning than they looked or acted and perhaps she was referring to something like this, that they actually did have the capacity to pull off the coldly premeditated murderous attack.

  There weren't too many other explanations for it, the Plebs had to be the offenders.

  Corey seriously doubted Melissa and co lost control of their bonfire and managed to burn down their own village and kill scores of their own people in the process.

  Reflecting upon that Corey thought of Raven.

  Since it was quite clear that the trash talking dark girl wasn't among the approaching octet, the raggle taggle band of armed survivors then evidently she, not to mention her also absent twin sister, was one of the luckless multitudes lost in the black smoking wasteland of ruins.

  Though he didn't want to, Corey cast an uneasy eye back out over the hellish terrain where corpses blistered and crackled to charcoaled meat amidst the shambles of torched homes and storage facilities.

  Who was to say that nearby arm, that black skeletal monstrosity on the outskirts of the smoldering pitch didn't belong to Raven?

  Maybe one of the entire bodies, barbequing away to ultra well done char grill with a nasty stench of smoked steak was that of Raven, hopelessly trapped in the inferno with no chance of escape.

  Perhaps that was her skull, that black football shape with its empty eye sockets and chocolate bud teeth.

  Corey pictured a giant Pleb swinging some heavy bladed instrument, maybe an axe or a meat cleaver designed for severing tough joints, slicing Raven’s head right off, dropping it among the burning wreckage to sizzle.

  He visibly shuddered, trying to wrench his mind away from the horrible turn of thought it had taken.

  In the relatively short duration of time he'd known Raven he'd reached the simple conclusion that he didn't like her.

  He knew without a doubt that she didn't like him either, hell that was an understatement, he was pretty sure she'd detested him upon first sight.

  Her suggestion, at the treacherous bridge crossing, that she would be rather happy if he went and fell off the ramshackle construction to either the roiling waters or jagged rocks below clarified to Corey the depth or lack of feelings she might have had for him.

  Still, as much as she didn't like him and as much as he didn't like her he never in a million years wanted her dead.

  He may have wanted her to go away and leave him alone so that he never had the misfortune of laying eyes upon her, but he didn't want her to die.

  He didn't want anybody to die; he hadn't wanted anybody to die.

  As obnoxious and truly nasty as she was, Raven didn't deserve the gruesome and agonizing death which had apparently befallen her.

  Nobody deserved to die in that horrendous fashion, engulfed in searing flames, having flesh sizzling off bones, cooking in your own body fat to little more than ashes and cinders.

  While it was one thing for Corey to look upon the disaster in some sort of detached way, upon witnessing that the girls he had know
n were still alive and walking towards his group at this very moment it was another to remember that Raven had been part of the bunch and now she wasn't.

  This acknowledgment made it all the more terribly real to him.

  The approaching eight were walking single file now, lead by Melissa.

  Trying to wrestle atrocious images of a headless Raven scorching to a horrible end out of his mind Corey turned his attentions to the shotguns wielded by Melissa and Blaise.

  Melissa’s weapon was a standard Mossberg twelve gauge which she hefted in two hands, quite a nasty piece of work.

  Blaise's gun was something entirely different, a pump action with a pistol grip.

  While Melissa carried hers safely and cautiously Blaise was now slouching along nonchalantly holding the gun in only one hand, pointing its nose at the ground as if she had some large oversized handgun.

  The fashion she strolled along carrying the weapon suggested alarmingly to Corey that the gorgeous redhead knew exactly how to work one of those with maximum results.

  Though she exuded a cheeky, even slutty aura Corey suspected that underneath that mischievous good time girl exterior lurked a far different and dangerous persona.

  She slung the pump action pistol grip shotgun as if she could shoot with it one handed too, pumping it with one hand and then holding it out and blasting as if she were firing a handgun.

  Corey knew all about firearms having been raised as a youngster with a big variety of guns in the household

  His father, long deceased bless his soul, had been a veteran who'd served his country in a number of wars and he'd taken it upon himself to educate young Corey in the safe usage of guns.

  Though Corey’s mother, also deceased, bless her soul too, cast an unfavourable eye over the teachings of weaponry to their child, father Somerset had been unrepentant and firm that Corey should learn how to respect firearms and how to utilize them in a safe manner.

  As a consequence Corey learned how to fire all manner of guns; how to strip them down, take them apart, correctly clean them, how to rebuild them, how to constantly check for wearing down of parts, how to check for defects.