by Jim Goforth
Other than that he saw nobody else. There were no more of the people who’d rushed from the church in sight, at least none visible.
"Where'd they go?" He mused to Desiree, her shallow breathing sounding loud in his ear in the sudden quiescence that now descended. "Back inside?"
"I guess so, suppose a fuck-load of guns blasting at you would do that wouldn't it? Drive you for cover. Hope we at least got some of them."
"You didn't see if we did?"
"Nope, I was diving into the ground remember? I take it you and Dennis didn't see anything?"
"Couldn't see shit from back in the woods. Only you diving into the ground. Giving me a coronary."
"Speaking of Dennis," Desiree obviously only just now acknowledged that King wasn't in Corey's company. "Where is the Drake Slayer?"
"Back there embracing the forest floor," Corey gestured behind himself, back into the thicker dark of the stands of trees. "He didn't seem too keen on moving after I crash tackled him thinking flurries of bullets were headed our way."
"Best place for him I guess," Desiree muttered, though she sounded dubious and wary, no doubt still naturally suspicious of how quickly Dennis King switched allegiances even though he had gone to extreme measures to prove it was authentic. "Fuck it, let's make a move closer. I can't see anyone."
Corey couldn't see anyone either, but that didn't necessarily indicate that nobody was there.
His desire to get any closer to the nightmarish bulk of the decrepit church was minimal to zero.
Nonetheless lying here in the grass probably wasn't the best option either, though given what other outcomes were likely to be on the cards Corey could easily envision staying right where he was, with Desiree, knowing both of them were alive, until this all ended.
That wasn't going to happen.
Still on her elbows and knees, Desiree slithered out of the sanctuary of the trees and the long grass. Even though the grass outside of the wooded regions was equally thick and overgrown it had been beaten down and flattened by automobiles driving over it so the sudden exposed feeling generated by leaving the woods was even more acute.
Suppressing a dismayed groan that this wasn't all about to just blow over, Corey crept after Desiree as she came up into a crouch position, holding her pistol up in one hand.
They moved quickly, both crouched down low in a scampering scuttling fashion until they'd covered the ground between the trees and the relative respite afforded by the stationary vehicles, quiet and dark shapes sitting in the moonlight.
Then Dennis King came blundering out of the woods.
"Wait for me guys!" He whined, and the pleading sound of his voice was so unnaturally loud in the eerie silence that immediately descended after the two separate instances of cracking and booming gunfire that it shredded Corey's nerves.
The back door of the blue (Corey guessed) Toyota parked a foot or two from where Desiree and Corey crouched flew open, disgorging first a pair of legs then a whole body, a tall bulky figure with a shotgun in one hand.
The moonlit area illuminated the visage of this surprise appearance enough for Corey to distinguish Pat Howard, one of Haskell's many lunk-headed gang members, his face a leering hatemask of stubble and dark shadows.
Howard came to a halt just outside the car, swinging his shotgun up in a beefy hand level with his hip, a quizzical expression stealing over his face as he recognised the person stumbling into the open.
"Dennis? What the fuck?"
Dennis stopped too, swiveling a little so the .32 in his shaking paw was obscured behind him.
Howard gazed at him with bemusement and suspicion clouding his features, probably mulling over why Big Wes's usual shadow was staggering around on his own out here in the midst of gunfire raining at the church from an assortment of different directions.
"Who are you talking to?" He wanted to know.
"You guys," Dennis came back with. "I got away. They had me, but I got away. Wes didn't though."
That was when Desiree struck, cannoning into Howard with a violent surge that sent him flying to the ground, the unexpected blow dislodging the shotgun from his hand.
Rather than shoot, Desiree must have been going for her knife when Howard retaliated, swinging a fist at her face, knocking her sideways with a cry of pain.
Seeing that sent a firecracker of rage detonating in Corey's brain and he lunged from behind the Toyota, landing a series of kicks on Howard before the thug could regain his footing and continue an attack on Desiree.
Evidently he hadn't been expecting to be assaulted from two different assailants for Howard wasn't ready for Corey's brutal anger-loaded kicks and he sprawled in the grass in a fit of painful obscenity filled expressions.
"Dennis! Grab my shotgun and blast this prick!" Howard urged from his vulnerable position, too far from the missing weapon to snatch it for himself.
Dennis did no such thing which earned him one more point in the earning of trust from Corey.
He stood stock still where he'd originally stopped.
"Dennis, what the fuck? Get the shotty!"
Corey clobbered Howard with a bunched fist, but the blow wasn't a fantastically executed one and didn't do the damage hoped for; the exertion spent on delivering it causing Corey to slip in the grass and fall awkwardly atop his opponent.
Pat Howard seized the opportunity to counterattack and flung Corey backwards off him, scrambling full mount onto him with obvious designs on a Somerset ground and pound.
Framed in the glow of the moonlight Desiree rose up behind Howard, the lunar illumination catching her perfect face just right.
In it she looked nothing like the gentle infrequently vulnerable woman she'd shown Corey she could be, she looked every bit her dangerous Toxic Twin persona, the scum eradicator, the violent vigilante.
Before Howard could swing a single blow, Desiree landed a booted foot on his broad back and punted him with savage force, pitching him over Corey's prone shape headfirst into the back seat of the open doored Toyota.
Corey slugged him in the midriff as he knelt like a parody of an executioner’s victim, waiting for the axe blade to fall and cleave his head.
He rolled free as Howard started an attempt to stand.
Desiree stepped in close. She slammed the car door against the kneeling oaf’s body, smacking it against his spine.
Then Dennis wandered into the melee.
"How about just doing this?" he suggested and leaning in, pointed the gun in his hand at the back of Howard's head.
"No!" Desiree and Corey chorused in unison, but their twin efforts to keep the noise factor deadened came simultaneous with Dennis pulling the trigger.
The pistol cracked, Howard's body flopped forward on the back seat.
As the firearm bucked in his grip, Dennis dropped it and it fell away into the dark interior of the vehicle, landing with a soft thump on the floor.
Again Desiree reacted with the swift lithe movements of a cat, dropping promptly to the grassy ground and scooting backwards underneath the automobile, snatching a fistful of Corey to have him do likewise.
He didn't require much prodding to do so, flopping over on his stomach to do a backwards crawl at a rapid rate, hissing a warning to the dumbstruck Dennis through clenched teeth.
It didn't look as though it reached Dennis King's ears; the self-appointed executioner of Pat Howard stood as though he were in a fugue state barely comprehending what he had just done.
Corey realised he'd lost his own pistol in the quick melee, and saw it lying just before him in the grass.
He snagged it with shaky fingers and yanked it back into the dark shadows under the body of the car, and thankfully at that moment Dennis came out of his shocked stupor, at least long enough to flop to the ground and awkwardly get himself under the auto, scrunching up between the two rear tyres.
Not a moment too soon.
People were converging on the scene, coming from the hulking church monstrosity, a hubbub of voices comi
ng with them.
"Shit, you think Howitzer plugged someone?"
"Patty had a fucking shotgun, fool." Errol Haskell's voice. "Sounded like a pistol shot to me."
"That was close, real fucking close. Like right outside. Howitzer was hanging out here. Howitzer? That you?"
"Pipe down idiot! Keep your eyes peeled on the tree line; these fucks are sitting out there waiting to pop shots at us."
Under the car, Corey saw a bunch of legs moving over to the parked motor vehicles and felt certain his thundering heart was bound to betray him and his companions hiding spot. It seemed to be thumping louder than the gunshot that reverberated around his head like a deadly alarm resounding.
His knuckles were white, such was the grasp on the pistol, and his other hand, clasped by one of Desiree's, was in a similar state.
"Damn, is that Howitzer? Shit, is he taking a nap?"
"Get him up, fuckstick!" Haskell barked and two sets of legs loomed dangerously close to where Corey and Desiree sprawled.
They exchanged glances, meeting eyes in the darkness and both hit on the same thought at the same time.
With the noise created by one of Haskell's lackeys leaning on the open car door causing it to squeak laboriously in protest as the duo reached inside to haul out the slumped form of Pat Howard, both Corey and Desiree elected to retreat further back under the car, out the other side and brave the short expanse of space between this and the automobiles parked closer to the forest edge.
Wedged where he was between the rear tyres, Dennis King either wasn't budging or didn't see them go, which was probably just as well.
While Corey and Desiree slithered backwards fast and purposefully with no plan to waste one split second of time, Dennis trying to do likewise might have attracted the attention of the assembly gathered around Howard's strange kneeling nap. Corey didn't want to hazard a guess as to how many were there; a shootout probably wouldn't be a viable option for continued survival.
"Ah, shit!" An alarmed expression expelled from one of those designated to 'get Howard up' intimated they’d found the reason for their mates’ bizarre stance. "Fuck...ah...Howie's cactus. They fucking shot him in the back of the skull!"
There was a rush of rustling noise and then a muffled thump and from back underneath the second car Corey and Desiree had secreted themselves, the view of an assortment of pairs of legs was obscured.
Corey was now suddenly very glad they’d elected to make for sanctuary further away, for he acknowledged that Pat Howard's body had been unceremoniously dumped on the ground and though it was thankfully too dark to make out the damage caused by the .32 calibres exit wound, Corey could still tell the corpses mangled face pointed towards him.
A harsh laugh rang out amidst a sea of angered exclamations and vicious obscenities.
Raven's laugh.
CHAPTER 38
Desiree squeezed Corey's hand even harder and he was surprised he didn't feel bones break.
He imagined how hard the set of her face must be with that traitorous bitch’s unpleasant laugh ringing in her ears.
"You lot don't really have a clue who you're dealing with do you?" Raven needled, clearly unperturbed by the death of another of her allied group’s number.
"Sure. Somerset, Hunter and their fucking pals. And a bunch of your mates. Fine ass bitches for sure, but fucking trigger happy with Somerslut's guns, and about to get fucked up royally now. Big time. First Wes, then Colin, now Patty. And what have we got to show for it? Jack squat. Well that's about to change."
"Look, Corny and Flea don't impress me in the slightest," Raven snorted. "The only thing that concerns me about them is the fact that they've armed Blaise, Melissa and Desi. When those three come for you it's going to be big trouble."
"Come for me?" Haskell echoed. "We were supposed to be arming up to go take them out and next thing you know we're fucking ambushed. Are you playing for us, or them or what's the fucking score?"
"We're playing for us." That was Jett speaking now, her voice huskier and even more mocking than her sisters. "But we're all playing for the same end result."
"Well we better start playing harder," Jackson Vickerman, another fellow known to Corey, made his presence felt. "We need to round up these punks and bitches and fuck them. Literally. And I'm not particular which."
"Fuck this," Errol Haskell seethed. "I'm letting the freaks loose."
Corey and Desiree exchanged looks once more in the dark, their entangled hands now sweaty in each other’s grips.
So both Desiree and Melissa had been correct in assuming the Plebs were still imprisoned in the back of the truck.
They wouldn’t be for long if Haskell carried through with his angry vow. They would be released en masse on the St Agnes grounds, probably furious at being confined together in the trailers enclosure, maddened, vicious, bloodthirsty, and hungry. It was all well and good hiding here under the car with a bunch of psychotics who were too busy arguing to bother checking close proximities for their friends dispatcher, but the Plebs were an entirely different matter altogether.
In the reasonably cleared open areas encircling St Agnes, the brainless hordes wouldn't have any difficulty locating prey trying to remain unseen in such a lame hiding spot as Desiree and Corey's.
Even Lee's hole in the scrub on the side of the mountain back in the place where this horrifying nightmare experience began was a better hiding place.
"Dumb," Raven admonished Haskell. "That's just plain dumb. You want to take some of these people alive don't you?"
A surly grunt of assent was Errol's response.
"Then letting the Plebs out now isn't going to achieve that is it? Think, Errol Flynn, think!" She chided. "There won't be anything left of anyone they catch and let me tell you they'll be ravenous by now. Wouldn't be surprised if they start eating each other."
"Well that's not going to do us any fucking good is it?" Vickerman chimed in. "If those ugly mutant motherfuckers get the munchies and get a hankering to chomp one another to bits what's the point of them? I say Errol's on the money, we let them out and round up Somerset and the bitches."
"I say you're an idiot. There are a couple of people I want alive, at least for a little while and I think it's past the point of telling the Plebs which ones they are supposed to spare," Raven snarled. "And besides, Errol wants a few play toys too don't you Flynn?"
"Yeah," Haskell snorted. "Yeah, you're right. I do. Got some plans in mind for some, you bet I do."
"So use your head then. If they're all chewed up there will be nothing left for you to chew then will there?"
Under the car Corey and Desiree breathed collective sighs of relief as it appeared that Raven's cajoling temporarily stayed his decision to unleash the freaks, but even so the words of the two separate murderous gang leaders were chilling and ominous, and left Corey in no doubt of their respective intentions.
He didn't need to be told explicitly to know who Haskell, Raven and co wanted to keep alive 'at least for a little while', but nonetheless the deviant bunch went on to outline their wish list of captives.
"Who do you want Flynn?" Raven prodded.
"That fucking feisty redhead bitch for a start," Haskell's answer was immediate and his voice dripped with lecherous and sadistic malice. "She's fucking mine and she is going to find herself in a world she has never been to."
"Ha-ha Blaise," Raven's abrasive laugh sounded like the scraping of fingernails on a blackboard. "Yeah, okay then, she's yours. But you want to be real careful there Flynn, real fucking careful or she will destroy you."
"Not fucking likely Raven," Errol Haskell retorted. "No chance. She got the jump on me once and that's only going to happen once. Errol Haskell doesn't get bailed up by a bitch and have that bitch not face severe consequences. Besides hang on, I ain't done yet. I want the boss lady with the black hair and I want Somerdog's girl. They’re both fucking bonertastic bits of trim and I'm going to trim the fine fuck out of all of them."
"Hold the
bus there sonny boy," Raven interjected forcefully. "Nobody is getting Desiree but me; you can count your life on it. She is all mine. Anyone who wants to argue otherwise dies by my hand."
"Which one's Desiree?" Haskell asked shortly.
"Corny's 'trim'," The disgust and seething jealousy was palpable in Raven's tone. "Fucking Corny. I loathe that piece of trash."
"Ah fuck." Bitter disappointment seeped from Haskell. "She is the prime of the prime. But well..."
"Look this is non-negotiable buddy. She's mine and you know the score. I'm giving you Blaise, and maybe Melissa so be thankful with that."
"Fine," Haskell grunted after a prolonged silent deliberation. "But look, how 'bout I get her when you're done with her?"
"Either there won't be anything left of her or I won't ever be done with her. Simple." replied Raven and there was a brutal note of finality in her voice.
A commotion of voices erupted from other members of the gathering, along the lines of protests and enquiries about what was in it for them.
"There are other girls out there," Raven informed them. "Don't worry about anyone missing out on getting your end wet, they aren't the only girls trust me."
"Or guys if you're that way inclined," Errol snorted with a wry nasty laugh, having a sly dig at his own cronies. "That goes for any of you girls who ain't dykes like Raven."
"Fuck you Flynn. But that's right ladies. Corny, Flea and whatever mates they might have are out there too. Having said that, I'm itching to get my hands on Corny myself. For entirely different reasons. I want to slowly eviscerate that slimy motherfucker."
"Well again we butt heads," Haskell broke in. "I got bones of contention to pick with Corey fucking Somerset so let's just cross that bridge over who gets to cut the bloody flesh off his bones. When we get to it."
"Deal," Raven said curtly as a murmur of assent rose from Vickerman, Jett and any of the other members of both camps present; the promise that more girls-and guys- were out in the woods for their perverse pleasure seeming to appease the majority of them.