Plebs

by Jim Goforth

  Apparently it hadn't been zipped shut for as it somersaulted over, spraying blood from the bottom, it dumped its contents.

  Corey was horrified to see what they were.

  Disembodied human limbs and a sloppy menagerie of other gruesome artifacts flopped out, sprawling on the ground like offal on the killing floor of an abattoir.

  CHAPTER 18

  "HEY MOTHERFUCKERS!" The angry voice roared, closer now. "I'M WARNING YOU!"

  Rachel, the last inside, yanked unsuccessfully on the door to close it.

  Melissa stepped forward and hauled it shut as Blaise rushed around the front of the van, aiming her shotgun at a big burly figure charging towards the parking lot; some bladed instrument gleaming in the moonlight, held aloft in his huge meaty hands.

  "How about stopping right there fucker?" Blaise suggested calmly holding her shotgun steady in one hand.

  The figure, no more than a large silhouette, came to a screeching halt prior to even reaching the parking lot.

  "What the fuck?" He shouted in a harsh stentorian bellow.

  Corey could hardly take his horrified eyes from the bloodied mess strewn across the parking lot and spilling from the bag in a crimson tide.

  "Corey!" Melissa thumped him in the back. "Get in the front!"

  Prodded into action by Melissa's firm hand Corey leapt into the front seat in particularly unspectacular fashion, striking his shin as he did.

  He flopped in the seat, sliding into the very middle, trying to grit his teeth and ignore the jagged barb of pain which went shooting up his leg.

  He'd been under the impression that Melissa was to be the driver of the borrowed vehicle, but she vaulted into the passenger seat alongside him, pulling the door shut after her.

  She laid the shotgun along the dashboard and rolled her window down.

  She handed the set of car keys to Corey, in particular one larger than the rest, evidently the ignition key.

  "Stick the key in the ignition," she commanded. "Turn it on and kick it over."

  Corey shifted over into the drivers’ seat, fumbling in the dark interior of the car for the ignition, one eye warily watching the proceedings outside.

  It was still a tense standoff; the dark bulk of the mystery shadowman still bailed up by the unrelenting eye of Blaise's steady shotgun.

  Blaise had inched around from the front of the van to where she stood now just outside the driver’s door.

  "Drop the blade," she asked nicely of the frozen figure.

  "No fucking way."

  "DROP IT!" Blaise shouted, a strident burst of noise which scared Corey so that he jumped, startled, and thumped the knee of the same leg he'd smashed mere seconds previously on the steering wheel.

  The fellow must have been alarmed also for he instantly let the bladed instrument tumble from his hand, thumping softly in the grass.

  Corey didn't have a doubt that had the guy not complied with the request Blaise would have pumped the shotgun and blasted.

  Having to ask three times seemed to be an unreasonable amount of Blaise’s time and energy.

  "Kick it away from you," Blaise instructed the now apparently unarmed nutjob. "Preferably in the lake."

  "You serious?"

  "Yeah I'm serious, do it."

  "Fuck that. I dropped it, that's enough. Can't hurt nobody on the ground can it?"

  Corey finally had the key in the ignition. He tramped on the clutch, turned the ignition and gave it a touch of gas.

  The engine spluttered halfheartedly then roared into life as Blaise snarled at her uncooperative target.

  "I will shoot you, idiot."

  "You're stealing my fucking van bitch, give me a fucking break."

  "I'll shoot both your legs off," Blaise warned. "You'll die of massive blood loss but you won't die quick. You'll die very slow and there will be a lot of pain. Would you like that?"

  Obviously the dimwitted fellow didn't particularly like the sound of that.

  He kicked at the grounded weapon, missed and tried again.

  This time it flipped over end over end a couple of times and came to rest sticking up out of the ground.

  Never taking her eyes from him Blaise walked quickly to the tool, stooped and picked it up with her free hand.

  Still glaring at its owner she flung the weapon far away, in the direction of the lake.

  There was a distant splash as it dropped in the water, to sink to the bottom.

  Impotent curses bubbled venomously from the enraged man-shape standing bailed up outside the parking lot.

  "Sorry 'bout the van buddy," Blaise sounded truly apologetic. "But we have a life and death situation here."

  "I don't fucking care. You'll pay, the lot of you. You see if I'm not right," the fellow shot back. "I'll get you all, see if I don't."

  "Hey I said sorry. You wanta keep threatening me and I'm gonna have to take it back."

  "Let's roll Missy!" Melissa shouted from the front of the van over the staccato stuttering of the engine. "No time to chat!"

  "See ya," Blaise directed to the guy. "Don't move a muscle 'til we're gone. And even then, count to a hundred and then you can think about moving."

  "Fuck you bitch. Think I won't remember your face?"

  "Couldn't care less."

  “Well I will. Coz I'm gonna get you bitch, you and all your friends. As for you I'm gonna fuck you and kill you. And not necessarily in that order."

  "Oh, so sweet and romantic," Blaise simpered. "Guess you won't call me in the morning?"

  "I don't think you're taking this very seriously."

  "Who has the fucking shotgun you simpleton?" Blaise blasted in a sudden schizophrenic mood change. "I couldn't give two fucks about what your intentions are. You come after me and my friends and you better bring an army."

  "Oh I'll bring an army. And they'll all fuck your dead corpse!"

  "Put the van in reverse," Melissa urged Corey.

  He did so, on autopilot, struggling a little to get the sticking gears to co-operate.

  Once again his mind was fogging up with terrible panicked thoughts.

  Raven and the marauding Plebs seemed like sketchy figments of his imagination, lost over in the distance on the other side of the lake, the river, the bridge.

  They belonged in the land of surrealism, a nightmare eluded and left behind.

  Now he was entrapped in a new nightmare sequence, a real here and now terror dream, a frightening distortion of reality fraught with horrible possibilities.

  He was sitting at the wheel of a murder van, his fingerprints all over it while some psychopathic maniac freak who toted dismembered human bodies in a sports bag and waved a bloody meat cleaver issued vile threats of rape and mayhem.

  Forget the damning fact that Corey's fingerprints were all over the murder van he and his violent friends cleverly decided to steal, they were also on the handle of the gruesome body bag.

  Blaise had no doubt left her prints all over the probable murder weapon.

  The Plebs and Raven's renegades were a bad dream vanishing in the past, this was the new nightmare.

  Corey imagined a giant black futureless chasm opening up beneath him and sucking him down into a vortex of despair.

  "Scoot over hun," said Blaise and he swiftly did so, trying to keep his face away from the threatening eyes of the murderer outside.

  "Here,” Blaise said and he had to turn to look at what she was giving him.

  She dumped the shotgun on his lap and jumped behind the wheel of the van.

  A bellowed oath erupted from the goon outside.

  "What the fuck? Tell me I'm not seeing this right! Hey you, fucker in the middle, I know you!"

  As Blaise looked back over her shoulder, telling the crew in the back to stay down low and stamping hard on the accelerator, the van shot backwards.

  A chilling shouted warning floated after the departing vehicle.

  "Somerset, you are a fucking dead man!"

  Blaise reversed at high speed for
approximately one hundred metres or so then slammed the van back into forwards, exiting the car park with a screech of tyres as she spun the vehicle in a half circle.

  Melissa gazed curiously at Corey as he desperately attempted to juggle the shotgun and keep himself upright at the same time.

  Luckily he'd jammed his own gun into the waistband of his borrowed jeans otherwise he wouldn't have been able to do it all.

  "Who is Somerset?" Melissa queried though Corey suspected she already had an idea.

  "That's me," he said simply, feeling as he confirmed that fact that the nightmare just ascended to an entirely different level, a personal level.

  "That guy a friend of yours?" Blaise asked, racing up the dirt track which branched off from the car park and would eventually lead them to the blacktop of the highway.

  "Not exactly," Corey muttered, feeling somewhat paralysed and numb.

  Belatedly, and courtesy of the shouted threat mentioning his name, he was acknowledging why this van, this motor vehicle he'd assisted to steal was so familiar to him.

  He'd seen it once before. On the night Greg Scanlon died.

  It belonged to a character named Errol Haskell, one of Scanlon's brutish bully band, a fellow who'd always displayed tendencies of a violent mental imbalance.

  Those violent predilections seemed to be manifesting themselves now; apparently he had graduated from petty thuggery to homicide.

  It wasn't a natural progression, but it was a progression nonetheless.

  He also seemed to have become prone to steroid abuse or something similar, for what little Corey had seen of his figure suggested he’d muscled up his bulk about threefold what it used to be.

  Corey supposed the fact that Lee hadn't registered familiarity with the van was because Lee hadn't seen the vehicle on that fateful night.

  Corey had. He'd watched Haskell jump into the drivers’ seat with the rest of the surviving Scanlon cronies and bail prior to the arrival of the police, obviously to rid the scene of their car.

  They'd returned of course later, by a different means, in time to give their various stories branding Lee a murderer to the cops.

  Now here was Haskell, a giant version of his former self, down by the lake in the dark early hours of the morning, carrying a murder victim in gruesome segments, obviously seeking a safe place to discard the corpse.

  In the process he had the vehicle stolen and now he'd identified Corey Somerset, one of his old enemies, as one of the car thieves.

  Corey tried unsuccessfully, short of himself dying a violent and painful death, to visualise how the night could get any worse.

  "You know him though do you?" Melissa asked, her dark eyes penetrating and curious.

  "Yep. I know him."

  "Who is he? Did he come to the lake with you?"

  "No, he didn't come to the lake with us; I told you we didn't come in a car. It's just a bad coincidence that he's here. Very, very bad."

  "Bad? Sure, he was waving a cleaver around like an idiot, but that's it."

  "Didn't you see what was in the bag?" Corey couldn't believe how nonchalant Melissa was.

  "No, I was watching numbnuts. What was in the bag?"

  "A fucking hacked up human body!" Corey exploded. "Bits and pieces fell out when we tossed it out on the ground. That's where all the blood was coming from. Obviously the maniac has killed somebody, probably some girl he's raped and now he's here at the lake trying to dump the body. And we disturbed him and took his van!"

  "Jesus Christ!" Melissa's eyes widened immeasurably.

  "Exactly. His name's Errol Haskell and he's a fucking insane freak. Even more insane than he ever was apparently."

  "You want me to turn around, go back and blow his head off?" Blaise asked as calmly as if she was asking him if he took sugar with his tea.

  'Yes!' Corey shouted inwardly. 'Yes please.'

  Instead he shook his head.

  A chorus of non-related noise came from the passengers riding roughshod in the back.

  Apparently they'd been too busy trying to remain stable to pay attention to the morbid conversation in the front.

  "Could you take it easy on the driving?" Tasha. "We're flying everywhere."

  "Hang on." Blaise suggested.

  "To what? There's nothing." Jess.

  "Oh, I'm going to be sick." Probably Britt. "There's blood everywhere."

  "Just take it easy," Melissa called. "Nobody throw up. We'll be off the dirt in a bit and on the highway where it will be smoother."

  "Easy for you to say," Serena.

  "Shit, I sat in the blood." Lee. "Uh this is bullshit."

  "Just steady on," Melissa advised. "Anybody else see what was in the bag?"

  "I did," Desiree's voice floated back and Corey guessed she hadn't yet told the rest. "You want me to tell them?"

  "You better. Apparently Corey knows the guy who owns this van."

  "What?" Came Lee's voice.

  "What was in the bag?" Clamored most of the others.

  "Quiet!" Melissa snapped, then to Corey. "You want to tell 'em?"

  Corey didn't particularly, but then again he didn't want it to be real. But it was.

  "Lee," he addressed his friend since he would be the only one the name he was about to say would have any significance to though the remainder of the statement would impact on them all.

  "Yeah?" Lee grunted impatiently while Corey could hear some of the other girls prodding Desiree to tell them what mystery the bloodied bottom bag contained.

  "This van belongs to Errol Haskell. That psycho at the lake was him. He had a dismembered body in the bag."

  "What!" Lee repeated, but this time it wasn't so much a question as a disbelieving moan of despair. "Ah shit. Shit! Did he see us?"

  Once again Corey thought electing to remain silent or even lying about it would have been the better option, the safer option, but he chose to tell the truth.

  "Not you. He didn't see you, but he saw me."

  "Shit! Did he recognise you? I mean, your hair's longer, you know, he might not..."

  "He yelled out 'Somerset you're a fucking dead man'," Corey said. "I'm guessing that's a pretty sure bet he recognised me."

  "Ahh fuck!" Lee raged and Corey heard a sudden thump behind him.

  Turning his head in surprise he realised that Lee had punched the side wall of the van in fear and angry frustration.

  He also noticed something he hadn't before.

  The front seat was separated from the spacious back area by a metal grille very similar to that in a police paddy wagon.

  A small child could maybe squeeze a hand through a gap, but nothing larger than that.

  Seeing that grille firmly in place conjured up unwanted and unpleasant visions of Errol Haskell driving an unfortunate victim to a secluded place to be tortured and murdered, that poor soul trapped in the back, never able to lay a hand on their captor.

  "I didn't see the contents of the bag," Blaise admitted. "But I'm all for going back and hunting this bastard down. He swore he'd get me and the rest of us too. I thought he was full of hot air, bluffing you know."

  "Well he's not!" Lee exclaimed. "Not if he's already killed somebody. And now he knows that you know! And he already has enough reason to kill me and Corey."

  "What's that mean?" Asked Desiree, alarm in her voice.

  Lee was abruptly silent as if he knew he'd said too much already.

  "Corey?" Desiree prompted.

  "I better let Lee tell you. If he wants to."

  "Lee?"

  "You can tell them Corey," Lee said. He sounded like he was done talking, like he just wanted to sit still and ruminate on this new horrible development.

  "You sure?"

  "Sure, I'm sure!" Lee barked, his voice edgy and tense.

  "Okay." Corey could sense them all back there, pressed up to the grille as close as humanely possible, like caged monkeys at feeding time.

  "A few years back," he started, though now with all those repressed memories r
ushing back it felt as though it had only happened yesterday. "Lee killed Errol Haskell's best friend. Or one of them anyway. It was an accident, but Haskell and his pals don't see it that way."

  "May as well tell them the truth," Lee suddenly interjected. "It's not like any of these girls are innocent or anything and we already know they're not gonna go to the police under any circumstances.

  Yeah, I killed Greg Scanlon-that's Haskell's friend- but it wasn't an accident. It wasn't like it was planned or a premeditated murder or anything like that, but I sure meant to kill him. A spur of the moment opportunity arose and I took it."

  Lee paused and took a deep breath. All eyes in the back were on him, as were Melissa's, turning around to gaze through the grille.

  Blaise glanced at him in the rear-view mirror while Corey, the only one not to be staring at Lee watched the uneven road as the van jostled along it.

  "Those guys-Scanlon and Haskell and their cretin mates-made my life a living hell," Lee carried on. "They bullied me, beat me up, took my money, basically fucked with me every single chance they got. So when I saw an opportunity to get some revenge I took it. Big time."

  Silence descended in the van when it became evident that Lee had concluded his story and wouldn't be providing intimate details about it.

  "Shit!" Melissa whistled. "How'd it happen?"

  "Scanlon's bunch of idiots crashed a party at my place," Corey picked up the tale. "They were drunk as hell, causing trouble, trying to pick fights, pissing everybody off. Lee was upstairs when Scanlon went up to find him. Scanlon got thrown over a railing, broke his neck, cops came, ruled it an accidental death by misadventure or something like that and that's it. There was an investigation and hearing, all that shit, but foul play was never found to be part of it."

  "Except by Haskell and all his other cronies," Lee muttered. "And now Haskell really has another reason to get us."

  "What's he gonna do?" Jess asked. "He HAS murdered somebody apparently; you think he's stupid enough to come after you again?"

  "Yes. To shut us up and finally get his revenge for killing Greg he will. He's fucking crazy, logic isn't his strong point. Besides he knows exactly where Corey lives."