Plebs

by Jim Goforth

  From his hiding place with Desiree where he was starting to feel suffocated and stifled, Corey was desperate to be somewhere more secure.

  He was burning with internal rage, fury and revulsion; also sick with the very real fear that there were absolutely no guarantees that these animals wouldn't get their degenerate paws on Desiree.

  He debated how far he might get if he launched himself out there right now and tried to take out at least Haskell and Raven.

  'Fat chance Corny', his mocking mental little voice sneered. 'Even with Desiree coming along too there's Haskell, Vickerman, Raven, Jett and who knows how many others. You might plug one or two, maybe more and likewise Desiree, but in the end you won't prevail. They'll get Desiree one way or another.'

  "I'll tell you this for free though," Raven's abrasive voice sounded again as Corey felt his hand in Desi's virtually going numb. "Aside from the, let's say, elegant decor and ambience you've created in that monstrosity you call a gathering place inside, you and your men haven't been much more impressive to me than fucking Corny. I thought combining forces with some likeminded souls would be an enterprising partnership, but ultimately I'm feeling a bit disappointed."

  "Yeah? Why's that?" Haskell challenged. "You want impressive, I'll show you impressive, rug muncher or otherwise. That goes for any of your girls. A little warm up for the main course, keep us all primed."

  "You fucking wish, dickhead. No, use your OTHER brain for once. I mean, come on, you guys are fucking amateurs.

  My girls and I managed to torch a whole village, destroy and eradicate almost all that opposed us in a matter of minutes. We had Desiree isolated with only numbnuts Corny and dreadlock dick to contend with, and if not for Melissa and Blaise being the cunning fox bitches they are I'd be elsewhere running my own show with exactly what and who I wanted instead of having this conversation with you."

  "So?" Haskell interjected. "You had the freaks helping you, no big deal."

  "Yes, but I orchestrated the master plan, on their home territory I control them, making me the fucking Queen of Sheba. If not for a couple of hiccups I wouldn't be here now. I'm just pointing out your inadequacies to get shit done, I mean fuck, one of your boys gets shot right outside, you all run out like a bunch of sheep and proceed to argue about who gets to fuck who while he lays on the ground going cold.

  Fuck, whoever shot him wouldn't have been far away judging from the gunshot, but do you wieners look around or anything? Do you even check the cars, look around, look under the cars? Anything?"

  "Move, now!" Desiree hissed in a hushed whisper, and slid rapidly backwards out from under the vehicle with Corey in tow.

  On the other side of the car they each positioned themselves crouching beside a wheel, Desiree at the front and Corey back at the rear beyond the backseat passenger door.

  At least a cursory glance from any of the chastised blockheads wouldn't yield anything hidden directly under the auto, but if they decided to come around for further explorations Corey and Desiree were in some deep trouble.

  Corey clenched his pistol in sweaty white knuckled hands, looking right while Desiree in an almost identical pose kept her eyes left, each waiting for the inevitable crunch of footsteps in the grass.

  "Come on, really. Fuck. Amateurs," snorted Raven disgustedly. "You fucking idiots have to know this area better than Corny and his fools, and I'd be willing to bet the girls don't know squat about it. You can't tell me you haven't had plenty of fun and games with people out here chasing them around the woods."

  "That's true," Vickerman conceded in a gruff mutter. "Usually they aren't armed and blasting at us though."

  "Fuck that, we outnumber them, we outgun them and when the occasion calls for it we'll have the Plebs. You bunch of limp dicks need to harden up and get out hunting otherwise you may as well just all stand around and have a jacking off contest while me, Jett and the real pros handle business."

  "Upstaged by girls?" Haskell sneered. "I don't think so. We'll flush out the fuckers hiding like pussies in the trees, you see if we don't."

  At this point Desiree tapped Corey's arm, directing his attention to the area over behind the ugly behemoth of the aging St Agnes structure, all strewn debris and encroaching wilderness in the space bordering the church and the long disused cemetery.

  "We have to move," she mouthed. "Now. Over there."

  That was possibly one of the very last places Corey wanted to be, perhaps only outranked in fear inducing capabilities by the cemetery itself and the very inside of the Spot. Especially with its alleged 'elegant decor and ambiance', which if it was anything like Corey expected, knowing Haskell's perverse and sadistic taste might be right up Raven's alley, but would severely clash with what he himself would consider elegant decor.

  Once upon a time a modest white picket fence marched around behind the church bordering an area of neatly trimmed green lawns and bright patches of flowers, further separating the region from the great wrought iron gates and fence surrounding the massive expanse of the cemetery.

  Now, very little remained of that fence bar a few random palings still sticking in skewed directions from the ground, wrestling with the undergrowth, twisted vines, fallen tree branches, rubble from parts collapsed off the church and myriad other items of refuse that probably didn't require close inspection.

  Those few sparse fence sections still stubbornly standing in the tangled nightmare the church grounds had become looked disturbing in the light of the moon, like either irregular fanged teeth in an unnatural mouth or pale bleached bones sticking up from a long deceased ribcage.

  With an inward groan Corey mustered up the courage and followed Desiree's lead, slinking low to the ground, trying to move as fast as possible in as quiet a manner as he could, wincing with the sound of rustling grass appearing as if it were as loud as thunder in his ears bellowing their exact locations out to Haskell and Raven and the rest of the lunatics.

  What he did hear as he slunk after Desiree away from their meagre hiding spot, heading in the direction of the unruly mess outside the Spot, was equally as disconcerting as hearing them say something like 'Hey, they're over there.'

  "Okay boys, let's do this!" Haskell revved up the troops. "Let's get in, rack up some lines, get tweaking hard and hunt down some fucktoys and knife pin cushions! It's crazy time!"

  The chorus of affirmative and associated responses, mostly revolving around imbibing in speed, crystal meth and angel dust and rooting out those enemies lurking in the woods, was chilling and bloodcurdling.

  Completely full of the sort of drugs these lunatics were intending to take as preparations for their sanguinary hunting party would render some of these guys nigh on impossible to stop, even after being shot several times.

  Shit, Errol Haskell had mutated into such a giant steroid meth freak that he could well be dead and keep coming, not even completely aware that he'd been killed.

  The assembly of excited voices died away as Corey reached the edge of where the church fence once stood and he cautiously entered the grounds, joining Desiree, safe for now in the knowledge the bevy of brainless psychos was more interested in fueling up on dangerous drugs than bothering to search for Howard's killer right now.

  "This is bad," Corey uttered to Desiree. "This is real bad."

  "Would have been worse if they'd thought to actually look a little."

  "That too, but with the shit they're going to indulge in they're going to come out insane, psychotic and virtually impossible to stop. If they swamp any of us we don't stand a chance, guns or otherwise. Some of us might only get one shot off and that's not going to be enough."

  Desiree looked pensive and thoughtful, as beautiful as always and not nearly as shaken or rattled by the events that just transpired as Corey was. At least if she was in some way she wasn't outwardly displaying it.

  Perhaps she had now completely shifted into her ultra-dangerous persona and all vestiges of vulnerable fragile Desiree were long buried.

  Nonetheless
Corey found it necessary to say,

  "I won't let a single one of those animals get a finger on you."

  She gave him a wan smile and patted his thigh reassuringly.

  "Don't worry babe. Nobody's getting a finger on me except you," she vowed. "For now though I think we need to find some of the others, let them know what we've heard, what to expect."

  "Okay," Corey nodded. "I wonder if Blaise still plans to blow up the truck. Or if that's been put on ice? Maybe Haskell's got a sentry or two over there watching it. Like Howard skulking in the car."

  Mentioning Howard put Corey in mind of their absent tagalong Dennis King and he wondered if the surprise killer was still cramped up underneath the very car he'd shot Howard's brains out in.

  Possibly he was, since it was obvious he hadn't been routed out by Haskell and co with their sloppy attitude to searching the immediate area. Either that or he’d waited until they departed back into the bowels of St Agnes and then blundered back into the woods, vainly seeking Desiree and Corey.

  "Maybe," Desiree mused, in response to Corey's wondering regarding Blaise's initial idea to somehow eliminate the Plebs as a threat. "And maybe you're right about someone keeping an eye on the truck. We'll head over there and see."

  "I was afraid you were going to say that."

  "Come on," She gave him a lighthearted punch in the arm, jumping to her feet. "We're doing better than them so far."

  "Yeah. And Dennis is doing the best of all. One man wrecking machine. Who'd have thought it? Though he's liable to get us all killed in the process."

  "Which is why he's probably better off staying out where he is right now. They don't know he's the reason two of them are pushing up daisies so for now he'll be fine if one of them runs into him I would imagine."

  "I was thinking that too, though that was fucking close back there. I can't believe he just...fucking...well..." Corey's voice trailed off.

  "Never mind that. Let's get around the other side of this monstrosity," Desiree said, and then added, "By the way, Raven's dead wrong if she thinks we don't know the lay of the land here. Blaise will have memorised your map of here in great detail, she has a weird head like that."

  That was something of a comforting thought, the fact that at least one of their crew wouldn't be stumbling around clueless in strange terrain when Haskell's doped up trigger happy hunting party started trying to flush out fucktoys, but as for the rest of them...

  Together the pair of them cautiously trekked through the tangled mess of vegetation and rubbish adorning the large back area between the church and the gates of the cemetery, Corey constantly alternating looking down at the ground to make sure he wasn't about to step on something dreadful and casting wary eyes to the big dark mass of the Spot itself.

  It was darker back here and giant trees partially obscured some of the view of the church and with no glints of illumination coming from the decrepit structure, Corey couldn't even tell if the massive back wall of the bestial construction had any windows or not.

  It did have a great archway in the dead centre of it much like the front, bordered by stone pylons, undoubtedly leading to a back door, and judging from the fact that no light shone from there either probably meant that exit/entry point was a solid glassless one; solid wood perhaps.

  Corey guessed Haskell and his hordes didn't exactly bother venturing out into this untended natural disaster zone out back; they certainly didn't waste any energy on garden upkeep or mowing the lawns, it was most likely more a dumping ground for rubbish.

  'And unwanted items from unfortunate victims', his morbid internal voice said, slipping unpleasant notions insidiously into his mind. 'Unwanted body parts'.

  A hideous image came along with that gruesome thought; Errol Haskell purposefully striding out the back door, down the cobbled stones of the floor between the stone pylons and coming out through the archway, a long black sports bag gripped in his big beefy hands.

  Opening the bag, tipping it up endways and flinging a bloody slop of severed limbs, mangled entrails, internal organs and coagulating blood out to fertilise the earth.

  "Ah, Jesus!" Corey tried to beat that horrendous vision out of his head, but it was in there now, attached like a leech.

  "What?" Desiree fired a puzzled glance at him as they pressed on through the wilderness trek, occasionally forced to duck under low hanging branches, step over errant chunks of stone and haphazard fence palings.

  "It's nothing. Just giving myself a bad case of the creeps," Corey replied, but now it was in his head it wouldn't be dislodged.

  It was all too easy to imagine stepping on a dismembered hand, cracking dead fingers underfoot, or worse a decapitated skull, cranium bones shattering.

  It made the likening of the random remaining fence posts to flesh-stripped bones even more of a horrible comparison, and when one abhorrent thought fixed itself in Corey's cogitations inevitably it invited along a whole family of them.

  So consequently all this morbid mulling over stray bones and cast off body segments had Corey's mind way back at the ghastly Pleb hovel with its similar shrouds and adornments of atrocity.

  Which predictably led to thoughts of Tim.

  'Hey Corey, where's the big Haymaker?'

  Finally Desiree pushed out under a low-hanging drapery of vines and creepers masquerading as decorations for a stand of trees where the fence should have been and the enormous bulk of the truck was visible, virtually taking up the entire cleared area between this side of the church and where the woods began again.

  Aware she might be visible now with the moon still bright and the trees sparser here, Desiree ducked into a crouch so Corey did likewise, though he was still entangled in St Agnes backyard jungle.

  Corey was becoming a little alarmed at how spot on some of his predictions were turning out.

  There were two sentries on this side of the church, obviously commissioned by Haskell to keep the truck under surveillance.

  They didn't look like they were holding up the bargain very well.

  They didn't look like they were doing much at all.

  CHAPTER 39

  Desiree straightened and though she kept her pistol trained on the two slumped figures sitting side by side against the wall of the church, the closer she moved the lower the nose of her gun went.

  Corey kept his up, two steps behind her and off to the left of her, but soon enough he too saw why neither of them needed their weapons aimed at these two.

  Though the night rendered everything in varying shades of greys, blacks and the like, leeching most of the colour from all objects, there wasn't really any need to see vivid colours to get the gist of this picture.

  The fellow nearest to them sat with legs straight out and his head tilted at an odd angle to the left, towards his also seated silent companion.

  His eyes were wide open and staring and transfixed in an unblinking gaze, his mouth also stretched in a soundless scream. Blood streaks dribbled down his chin from the corners of this gaping maw and his exposed throat likewise oozed dark rivulets, slit comprehensively from ear to ear.

  Desiree stalked around to stand before the duo, prodding the outstretched legs of the second man with the toe of her shoe.

  It must have been a fairly solid prod for the motion toppled the characters top half of his body over onto his side and his head thumped on the grass.

  His legs twisted slightly as the weight of the upper torso fell and with his head tilted back, a mirror image of the vicious slice in his partner’s throat was clearly evident.

  In the moonlight gleam it looked like a ghastly bloodied smile, exposing a neatly severed windpipe and other assorted internal neck pleasantries.

  Corey found it almost impossible to drag his eyes away from the two dead men, neither of whom he was familiar with though he assumed they belonged to Haskell's posse.

  Either that or maybe they were the owners of the truck? Hijacked of their vehicle and murdered for their troubles; killed swiftly and ruthlessly by an
y one of the freaks inside St Agnes so the massive trailer could be twisted to suit their needs, namely the transportation of the Pleb army?

  "You know these guys?" Desiree asked in a hushed undertone, almost one of reverence.

  "No. I have no idea who they are." Corey was still fixated on the deceased couple, gazing in morbid fascination into the sightless eyes of the still upright one as if he expected the man to suddenly start talking and divulge his secrets. "I've never seen them before. With Haskell, or Scanlon, any of them. Not that they couldn't be new cohorts. Or the original owners of the truck..."

  A low chuckle resonated behind them, kind of creepy and sinister.

  Corey spun around so rapidly with the hairs standing up on the back of his neck he almost kept going around and around like a spinning top.

  Crouching in a nonchalant pose just outside the edge of the tree line with a cigarette in one hand and a bloodied knife in the other was Blaise, a crooked smile upon her shapely lips.

  "Hey sexys," she said, placing the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and raising that hand in greeting.

  Her hand looked black and for a fleeting moment Corey thought it was totally covered in blood.

  He realised she was wearing gloves as she stood and flung the knife towards the ground so it stabbed into the earth with its razor sharp point and stood upright, the handle shaking back and forth from the impact.

  "Hey sexy yourself," Desiree grinned and whilst she might have seemed pretty unflappable before, Corey sensed she was bathed in relief to see Black Widow Justice, as she almost skipped towards her.

  Gesturing at the two slit throat corpses, Corey asked the question of Blaise without actually speaking a word and she knew exactly what he meant to query.

  "Damn straight," she grinned, and though shades of the mischievous Blaise loitered in the expression, an abundance of the malicious did too.

  "Nice job," Corey murmured, really wanting to know how Blaise achieved it although neither of the deceased appeared to be armed.