by Jim Goforth
With a cursory look out into a back yard growing long shadows courtesy of the late afternoon sun, Corey saw no lurking Plebs or other unwelcome visitors skulking back there.
Lee jumped out of the car after reaching across to unlock and open the passenger side door.
"Come on! Come on!" he hurried the gun toting twosome. "In you get. The Beast is primed to go!"
"So are we."
Corey flung his carry case of firearms and miscellaneous bits into the back seat and then flung himself behind the wheel as Desiree settled into the passenger side, flashing more than a little exquisite thigh.
"Corey. Be fucking careful!" Lee commanded. "Don't either of you get yourselves killed and don't let none of the others either."
"Alright then," Corey promised, though he realised what a difficult promise to keep it might be.
Haskell and Raven's tribe of psychotics wanted him and all his friends well and truly deceased and the best he could really do was try extremely hard not to let that happen.
"I'm gonna call from Bodyworx," was Corey's parting shot to Lee before slammed the car into drive and sped out of the garage.
Though Corey was adept at driving a manual transmission, this one here, the Beast as it had been rather unimaginatively named, was an automatic. That made life a little easier, especially in this particular instance. If he happened to get trapped at traffic lights he wouldn't be required to go through the whole rigmarole of shifting down in gears and then back up again.
As the vehicle cruised off down the lane Corey glanced in the rear view mirror.
Courtesy of Lee the garage door was in the process of lowering, soon to shut as if it had never been opened to begin with.
Corey was relieved that he'd seen no malevolent Plebs sneaking in through the gap as Lee dropped the door. He hoped all those left behind inside the Somerset residence would remain safe and sound and supposed with all the deadly firepower they had on hand now they just might have the resources to remain so.
However he was a fraction bothered by the fact that of those left inside, only Melissa and Lee were excellent shots with firearms.
Rachel could be reasonable if pushed, Melissa had told him, but what if they were suddenly ambushed somehow? Would that constitute a sufficient enough push to significantly increase Rachel's firearm abilities or would she totally panic and lose whatever faculties she already possessed?
As for those other few who Melissa rated something along the lines of abysmal, Corey didn't even want to dwell on the outcome if they were caught napping.
"You okay?" Desiree queried, concern in her voice as Corey pulled into the street behind his house. "You look kinda thoughtful."
"Yeah, I'm alright."
"They'll be okay," she reassured him.
"Who? Melissa's lot or Blaise and the others?"
"Both of them. Everybody."
"Actually I'm just thinking about the girls left with Melissa," Corey voiced the thoughts troubling him. "I'm just a little concerned that if the Plebs do happen to rush the house like you said, the women who aren't so adept at handling firearms might find themselves easy targets even with guns in their hands."
"They won't attack while it's still daylight," Desiree told him. "No chance of that. And we've still got, what, an hour or so left before the sun goes down. This place of Ryan's, Bodyworx, is it far away?"
"Not particularly. Fifteen minutes drive, give or take."
"No problems. We should be back before the sun goes down right?"
"Should be. Providing all goes well."
All was seeming to go well, no random blasts of gunfire happened as they drove away from the house so the van must not yet have arrived in the driveway.
Corey's only problem now was trying to identify Haskell's altered van and intercept it between here and Bodyworx if it had already departed from the shop.
"What's more," Desiree spoke up as Corey indicated right, swinging that direction. "I don't believe that they've brought the Plebs into town with them."
"You don't?" Corey glanced across at her then back to the street unfolding before him.
"No, not really. I might be wrong, but I don't see how they would have gotten them here in daylight hours. I think Raven might be here with this Haskell guy, and possibly Jett and a few of the others as well, doing some preparation and reconnaissance, but my gut feeling is they haven't got the Plebs here."
Corey liked the sound of that, or it at least eased some of the nervous tension he'd been experiencing with the suggestion the Plebs might overrun the house in their absence and slaughter the occupants because not enough of them could defend adequately.
"I wonder how Haskell got in here anyway," he said. "It wouldn't be his style to walk from the lake to here. It isn't really that far, but he's just too lazy to go to those sorts of lengths."
"Well you can bet on this," Desiree said. "If Raven came with him they'll have flagged a passing car down, hijacked the car and either killed the occupants or given them to the Plebs. Either way they're dead."
"You reckon?" Corey felt a chill creeping along his spine. That did sound indeed like a fairly true account of how the lunatics got hold of transport, and it didn't entirely surprise him that innocent people with no attachment to the dreadful situation were suffering for it.
"I'd bet a lot on it."
"Well they would have had to hijack a semi-trailer to bring the Plebs here so I bet you're right on the one score-the Plebs haven't come with them.”
"You can bet I'm right on the other score too," said Desiree quietly. "Somebody else has died to provide them transport."
"Shit," Corey murmured, mentally picturing the scenarios of a carload of good Samaritans pulling their vehicle over to help out a couple of stranded hitchhikers, only to be dragged from the car and callously given to a tribe of freakish mutants as playthings. He shuddered to think of the fate of any women there, at the perverted hands of Errol Haskell.
"Maybe the cops are already onto Haskell's trail from the other girl he killed. Her family or something," Corey suggested hopefully.
"I don't think so. Corey, the cops will know nothing of any of this and they won't until it's too late. The war will be over, the dead will be dead. It's up to us now to finish Raven and Haskell and only us. We're so far outside the law now we can't have anything to do with them."
"I wasn't suggesting we do," Corey said. "Merely hoping they might be on Haskell's ass."
"They won't be," Desiree asserted firmly. "Raven is a master at avoiding detection from the law and whatnot. Haskell may be stupid, but Raven won't let him fuck up enough to bring them all down. We have to bring them down."
"I know," Corey conceded, and he did.
It was up to him and his rag tag band of heavily armed cronies to eventually lay the eternal nightmare to rest.
Either that or die in the process.
They were silent for a while as Corey powered the Beast along the streets, keeping his eyes in constant scan mode for a large van of any description.
Traffic was rather scare however and none of the cars which passed, going the other direction, were vans of any type.
One consolation to Corey was that Desiree kept a hand on his thigh the whole time, sometimes giving him a firm squeeze of reassurance.
"Do you know what they were gonna do to the van?" He asked at length.
"Wouldn't really have a clue. I know they were changing the plates and changing the colour, but that's all I know."
"Shit," Corey repeated. "Well I haven't seen any vans at all. Have you?"
"Nope. I've seen one truck, three sedans, a hatchback and a BMW. No vans."
"I suppose that's a good thing. Probably means they're still at Bodyworx."
"One can only hope," Desiree nodded, and for good measure gave Corey's thigh another comforting squeeze.
"Hey," Corey piped up as another notion occurred to him. "Do you suppose that Serena was onto something with what she said? I don't mean the bugging of the
house, that's just the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard, but perhaps Haskell and Raven have sent somebody to Bodyworx. I mean, Haskell knows where we all live and work."
"Would Bodyworx be a logical assumption?"
"Maybe," Corey mused. "Haskell knows his van isn't at my house, or at Tim's. Possibly he's already checked out Lee's. I actually believe if they think a little harder and smarter about it they may realise the van can be nowhere but Bodyworx."
The hand of Desiree reclining on his thigh tightened in a grip which was almost painful. “Sweetie," she admonished her tone stern. "Why don't you forget all these Serena-like fantasy realms of could bes and what ifs? Let's worry about something dire happening once something dire actually happens? If you let your mind start running after crazy ideas and possibilities it will run away from you and drive you crazy.
I mean, just before you came downstairs Serena was certain that the whole army of Plebs had somehow gotten into your house and were hiding themselves everywhere throughout it. Not really a highly logical scenario is it?"
"No," was all Corey could say, suitably chastised. He supposed she was right, no he knew she was right.
There was really no point fretting over anything until something to fret over actually happened, just as Desiree stated. In actuality perhaps Errol Haskell had passed by Corey's house only mere minutes after Blaise, Jess and the boys left the premises, seen his van wasn't there and stored that little nugget of information away for future reference.
Possibly he and Raven and anybody else weren't even still in the neighbourhood at all.
Corey suspected that they were, but who knew? He could be wrong.
The traffic lights seemed to be working in cohesion with him. He had a pretty good run of it, soaring through greens and scraping through amber's, but the intersection of Main and Piper Streets caught him, amber swiftly turning to red as he screeched up to the white line.
He sat fuming, for there was no traffic on either side of Piper and no pedestrians crossing Main in front of him.
"Goddamn traffic lights," he muttered.
"Relax baby," Desiree urged him, her fingers trailing across his thigh to teasingly tickle his groin. That wasn't likely to relax him those kinds of manoeuvres, that was more likely to kick him over into a highly excitable state.
He sat there impatiently tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to a beat of his own creation when a souped up bottle greens Trans Am rolled up alongside him. A cute little blonde with her hair in a high ponytail and ridiculously huge sunglasses perched atop her head flashed him a mischievous grin.
"Hey sexy," she called to him. "Wanna drag?"
"No," Corey said emphatically, though he knew the Beast had the staying power to keep up with, and maybe even thrash the hot rod.
"Aw come on, are you chicken?"
Desiree leaned forward so that the pesky blonde caught her first glimpse of Corey's passenger and the severe expression on her beautiful visage would have warned Mike Tyson to keep on trucking.
"Fuck off, lady," Desiree said and Blondie blanched as white as pure driven snow.
The lights changed abruptly to green and the Trans Am screeched away with more noise and smoking tyres than was necessary.
Corey couldn't stifle a chuckle as he took off at a more sedate pace.
"You are a scary woman aren't you?"
"Bet your ass I am," Desiree laughed. "Might have sounded like she was just offering to drag race you, but I know what these tramps are thinking. She was trying to steal my man!"
"I'm your man am I?"
"Damn straight. And if you forget it, you'll regret it."
"I'm not likely to forget," Corey vowed and he wasn't. How could he?
After their amorous early morning encounters and then the slight misunderstanding between them he was fairly certain that the pair of them were now a solid couple, but hearing her confirm it just now sent a burning flush of joy coursing through him. Their lighthearted banter here kept at bay darker thoughts of more sinister things and Corey was glad of that.
He didn't need to be reminded that he had a bag load of firearms in the back seat of the car in preparations for waging war on a horde of cold blooded murderous enemies, never mind one in a quick draw rig under his left arm.
He'd rather dwell on cogitations of the luscious lady in the passenger seat and relive their spicy hot sexual activity, praying that when the smoke cleared following the bloody battle he knew was inevitable, they'd both be still standing, alive to tell the tale.
CHAPTER 29
"Must be my lucky day for the ladies," Corey commented offhandedly. "They're just throwing themselves at me."
"Oh really?" Desiree asked, amusement in her voice. "And pray tell, barring this lady right her and your drag racing bimbo friend, what other ladies have been lining up for some Corey goodness?"
"I didn't tell you that Caroline suggested I stay with them in their room did I?"
"Oh did she now? And you declined the offer?"
"Yes I did. I was holding out for you."
"Very wise." Rather than annoyed at Caroline's upfront attempt to seduce Corey into her bed, Desiree seemed rather amused. "And lucky you did hold out."
"Yeah. Very lucky."
"I'm surprised it wasn't Blaise putting the hard word on you."
'Oh Blaise did plenty,' Corey almost said, but in the end he kept that to himself. He was fairly certain that had Desiree not been on the scene with eyes for Corey, Blaise may well have sunk her claws deep into him. She'd been relatively affectionate with him on occasion and the way she'd shamelessly paraded around in her G-string at the river seemed to suggest she'd have no problem exposing the rest of her body.
The way Melissa yelled at her on that occasion when she stripped off her wet pants and cavorted in her thong lead Corey to believe that Melissa was the chief and Blaise was merely a subordinate.
Now he knew better; Melissa, Blaise and Desiree were all chiefs, the remainder of the women were the subordinates.
He was also inwardly musing over anther paradox.
Blaise was a sexually aggressive individual, a predator in her own right and yet in her guise as Black Widow Justice she meted out violent punishment to rapists and other sexually predatory criminals.
Corey supposed that wasn't entirely hypocritical since Blaise probably got sex on her own terms and certainly wouldn't have to force anybody to participate with her.
He just found it to be an interesting piece of trivia, not something he'd lie awake at night trying to come to terms with, but a curious little notion all the same.
"Hey Corey," Desiree spoke up after they'd traversed Gideon Avenue in silence for a while.
"Yes?"
"You asked earlier how we ended up becoming the Twilight Twins?"
"I did."
"I'll tell you. I'll start with Blaise first since she was the original."
"Okay," Corey nodded, though internally he was starting to wonder if Desiree could read his mind and knew he'd been ruminating over Blaise.
"The subject matter isn't altogether pleasant," Desiree warned.
"That's alright. I'm probably desensitised to unsavoury topics now," Corey said which was probably true. What more could they tell him that was worse than many of the things he’d already heard.
"Blaise started her career as Black Widow Justice when she was fifteen. Before that she lived in the slummiest part of Slumsville in a rundown council block with her mother. Her mother was a seriously drug addled heroin addict who turned plenty of tricks to fund her addiction. Her dad, well he was a no good lowlife who ran out on them before Blaise could walk. To the best of my knowledge he's in jail now for a bunch of badly bungled armed hold ups."
"Sounds like Tim's dad," Corey mused quietly.
"Blaise can't remember anything about him, doesn't care to ever meet him and never plans to. Anyway, one night as Blaise and Drug-mom are carrying on as they did, always fighting, a customer turns up.
Ending the
heated discussion right there Blaise has a few choice words, telling both her mother and the newcomer exactly what she thinks of the pair of them and takes herself off to bed.
Not long after, there is a commotion, screaming and breaking sounds and Blaise heads back out to tell them to shut the fuck up. She's not expecting what she sees; her mother has been raped, bashed with a bottle and finally, strangled to death.
Blaise knows her mother is dead and she knows that the murderous swine will be coming for her next. He's standing over her mother’s body, still holding the neck of the bottle when he realises Blaise is back in the room.
He goes for her and discovers his sad mistake. Picking Blaise, even at fifteen, is not a clever idea.
Blaise always carried a knife -she still does of course- and by the time the guy has reached her she has the blade in her hand which he doesn't even see. He lunges at her, she steps right inside both his swinging arms and stabs him in the throat. Then she pulls the knife out, stabs him through both eyes before he's even fallen over, stabs him a few more times for good measure as he lays on the floor bleeding to death, gives him a couple of kicks, hits him with a chair leg and finally douses him in kerosene.
After that she cleans herself up, packs what meagre belongings she had, douses the rest of the hovel well and truly with kero and lights the whole place up.
Then off she went knowing she wouldn't ever be missed. Unfortunately nor would her mother.
Neither of them was known to any of their neighbours, all those people pretty much don't trust anybody and keep to themselves.
The house fire was deemed to be accidental. Both bodies inside were badly incinerated and were just regarded as residents who perished in the blaze.
With anonymity on her side Blaise became Black Widow Justice, using herself as bait to seek out would be rapists and meting out severe repercussions for them.
She dedicated her pursuit of justice to her mother. Although her mother was -these are her words, not mine- 'a pathetic excuse for a human, she didn't deserve to go out like that, nobody does.’
One of her victims, a sick fuck with a penchant for raping elderly ladies, had a mobile home so that quickly became Blaise's. That allowed her to travel the entire countryside, studying newspaper reports on sex attacks in various areas, tracking her prey, baiting them and finishing them off.