Plebs

by Jim Goforth

  Blaise rammed Jodie's body in to meet the thrust and the knife penetrated her in the flank, hit her ribcage, stuck between a couple of ribs and twisted out of Albert's hand.

  Blaise kicked him in the face, hammered his nose into a forty five degree angle.

  Errol Haskell scrambled backwards, fired another shot that went the length of the church, ricocheting off something solid and metal down by the front door.

  With his knife Errol then went for Desiree, and Corey's worst nightmare almost materialised in savage horrible technicolour right before his eyes in a bloody melee of butchery that was already an orgy of violent death.

  However, Haskell's knife wasn't intended for Desiree's flesh. It was used to chop the neck rope and then he flung it away on the floor, keeping his gun.

  The hand he had freed up he grabbed the back of Desiree's chair with and then proceeded to drag her backwards.

  By then Blaise was on the stage section, still with her naked dying shield, utilising her in much the same way Raven had used Serena.

  Back down in the church Melissa only had Lynn and Allan Lombardo to contend with, while Albert Lombardo spun around in random circles on the floor trying to stem the flow of blood from his disintegrated nose.

  Lynn scampered away on all fours, slipping in the mass of blood that now saturated the church floor and fell face first against Mohawk's splayed giantess figure.

  For now Melissa ignored her and went for Allan.

  Allan must have been one of the very few in the church with enough foresight to keep a gun handy and he pulled it now as Melissa lunged in.

  Lynn sprang from the floor and grabbed Melissa's knife wrist with both hands.

  Melissa let the knife go and it dropped and landed point first through the palm of Mohawk's upturned left hand, then she greeted Lynn's face with a giant roundhouse.

  Almost without breaking stride, in movements that seemed to be logical continuations of the same choreography, Melissa vaulted up into the air a couple of feet, amongst the gruesome hanging house embellishments.

  She came down with a horned cow skull, spray painted black and red by Haskell's artistic goons.

  Allan squeezed off one shot before he even had the gun up on the level and the ensuing bullet ripped a chunk of flesh off Pierced Girl's good leg.

  Her screaming renewed, then Melissa was hammering the cow skull against Allan's wrist.

  He dropped the gun.

  Melissa hit him in the face with the skull and popped his right eye with a horn.

  She applied the pressure, ramming the horn right in until it lodged and could go no further, stuck tight in the socket.

  Allan's back thumped against the wall of St Agnes right next to Melissa’s entry point, the smashed arched window, and he slid slowly down it to his butt on the floor, slumping over with a cattle skull sticking out of his face.

  Jett was able to secure the knife discarded by Errol. She came for Corey.

  He was guessing she didn't have the same plan for him as Haskell had for Desiree, but then Blaise was there and Jett altered her decision.

  Blaise slashed Corey's throat rope, then the binds behind the chair, freeing his hands.

  "Aren't you...? Weren't you...didn't you...?" Corey stumbled on a mouthful of unfinished questions as he brought his finally released hands around in front of him, the appendages feeling swollen, numb and heavy, hardly like his own limbs at all.

  "Later hun," Blaise said curtly, crouching and cutting his ankle ropes through. "And no to what you're babbling about there."

  "Forget her!" Jett shouted at Errol.

  Haskell was still bumping Desiree's chair along the floor, tipped up so it was dragging on the back legs.

  It was mostly a wall behind the stage area with an arched hollow in the centre of it where once a statue, most likely some kind of Jesus Christ would have resided, a few decorative bricks marking what was once a pristine white, but was now spray painted a motley non-colour. This was shot through with obscenities, crude simplistic drawings and the same type of basic Nazi, occult and obscure symbols that appeared on every wall inside St Agnes.

  Behind where Corey had been trussed to his chair however, there was another arched doorway which apparently led to another section, another part.

  This possibly contained the confessional box, maybe quarters for any live-in members of the former congregation, who knew what else.

  Certainly it led to the other door. The exit. Or the secondary entrance.

  The door that would lead down to what formerly was a quaint garden, and was now a weed choked nightmare of overgrown twists of vegetation.

  Beyond that was the deathly sprawl of the cemetery.

  Also out there, closer than the cemetery, the cars.

  An easy avenue of escape for Haskell if he had any keys for any of the outside vehicles.

  How he planned to get Desiree into one of the automobiles was another matter, still tied to her chair.

  From Corey's recollection they were all moderately small vehicles, sedans, hatchbacks, one of the cars already still standing open with Pat Howard lying deceased next to it.

  Ignoring Jett's shouted suggestion Haskell backed towards the arched doorway, yanking Desiree in her chair.

  He got a little smarter, jamming the pistol into the waistband of his jeans.

  With two hands on the chair, one on the back the other wrapped around Desiree he could drag it faster, exerting power to haul her into the dark of the area beyond the arched door.

  Freed at last Corey stood up. He promptly fell on his ass, his numb bloodless feet buckling his legs under him.

  The useless feet felt like lumps of misshapen meat, alien beings clamped on the end of his legs. He hammered at them with his equally senseless lumpen hands, trying to pound feeling back into both sets of extremities, looking despairingly out into the church to beyond in the darkness behind the wall.

  Out on the blood slick slaughterhouse floor of the church there were very few still left alive or moving.

  Albert Lombardo was strapping a discarded shirt -probably Ryan's- around his face as if he had a plan to halt the blood flow from his mutilated nose with that.

  Pierced Girl was flat on her back like an upended turtle; still shrieking and clapping alternating hands over her busted knee and the bullet wound in her other leg.

  Gordon Cooper's would be concubine was silent and still now, either in shock and passed out or dying from blood loss.

  Only Jett might have troubled Melissa and she was a fair way away from her, and probably feeling a little underdressed for the occasion, still lacking her lower half attire.

  So Blaise went after the departing Errol.

  Pins and needles started uncomfortably sticking into first Corey's mitts then his leaden feet.

  It wasn't a pleasant feeling, but it was a good sign, indicating sensation was returning.

  "Errol, you fool! Dump the bitch!" Jett bellowed, flashing eyes from Melissa to Blaise. "Blaise is coming!"

  CHAPTER 44

  Corey found he could stand now and did so. Patting himself down for weapons did no good; he had nothing on him although he had known that would be the case.

  Haskell and co would have disarmed him and Desiree of everything in the way of weapons they could find prior to knotting them to chairs.

  Or after. Either way.

  Jett suddenly made for the stage area.

  Corey picked up the chair he'd been imprisoned in and slammed it with all his might against the lectern.

  The plan was to smash it into segments, but though there were a couple of splintery cracks, the stubborn furniture held firm in one piece.

  All the same the sudden assault on the chair and the loud ensuing noise it made halted Jett in her tracks.

  She looked from Melissa to Corey in a flurry of gazes, her cornrows flying around her face as her eyes went from one to the other, a trapped animal.

  Melissa strode up behind Albert Lombardo who may well have forgotten in
his dazed bloody stupor that she was still present in the church.

  A frantic yelled warning from Jett was drowned out as Corey brought the chair crashing against the lectern again. And then again. And again.

  Lombardo saw Jett's mouth moving and her hands flapping around, but Corey's chair banging crescendo of wood thumping against wood rendered it all soundless.

  Melissa slit his throat.

  It was almost as savage a cut as that which Desiree inflicted on the Pleb in the woods who snatched Britt, and the end result had Lombardo's chunky head virtually tottering on a neck stump of fat and gristle.

  In the erratic orange candle illumination Corey thought he may have spied a knobbly white section of spinal bones inside the bloody mess as Melissa smiled grimly at Jett, her black star tattoo emphasising a chilling look in her eyes.

  Corey's misuse of the chair finally reaped a reward and it broke, splintering in irregular sections, leaving him with a busted chair leg in each hand, both with sharp spiked wooden ends.

  Though Jett still wielded the knife Errol Haskell flung away, Corey felt adrenalin surging in him, coupled with hatred, anger, the desire for vengeance.

  Looking as though he were some kind of weird vampire slayer armed with a stake in each paw, he almost wanted her to come at him, dared her.

  On the other side he wanted to flee after Blaise, after Desiree and Haskell.

  Errol had Desiree, he also had a gun.

  Blaise, as far as Corey knew only had her knives.

  Not that she was disadvantaged; Corey had seen firsthand what she could do with them.

  All the same...

  Blaise was entering the lion’s den.

  This was Errol Haskell's turf, his domain. His home ground, and if he could use it to outwit Blaise, get Desiree into a car, get it started and away it was over. For Desiree anyway.

  Jett abruptly plunged headlong into the aisle on the floor, going for neither Melissa nor Corey.

  She came up with her pants and Corey, the closest to her, lurched forward with his chair leg stakes.

  Going for clothes might have seemed a fraction incongruous at a time when Corey obviously meant business with his improvised weaponry and malevolent Melissa would definitely cut Jett's heart out without batting an eyelash, but then again running around naked from the waist down with blades, broken glass, multiple sharp items galore everywhere not to mention an overload of burning candles wasn't exactly the height of intelligence either.

  Jett rolled, her front splattered with blood from the bodies sprawled all over the floor, and bashed one of Corey's chair legs with the flat of her blade, hard enough to knock it from his still clumsy hand.

  She caught it with the hand clasping her pants and ran, unbelievably quick.

  Corey ran too, stepped in a congealing pool of blood and slipped like a cartoon villain landing a foot on a stray banana skin.

  Now Melissa ran too, in great strides, vaulting over corpses.

  Jett didn't waste a second of her head start; she dashed to the gaping hole in the side of the Spot that was Melissa's entry point to the house of horror.

  Bashing out what fragments of coloured glass that remained inside the window frame with the chair leg stake appropriated from Corey, she draped her pants over the sill, hoisted herself up regardless of any last toothy little glass spikes still biting into her palms and hurled herself out the window.

  The dusky globes of her naked butt glinted obscenely like a final insult to Corey as he regained his footing and then she was gone, dragging her pants after.

  "Get after Blaise!" Melissa commanded. "I'll stop this bitch!"

  Corey wanted to scour the church for better weapons, no doubt there was a plethora of them in here, guns galore, knives aplenty, the axe Mohawk used to remove Ryan's head, all kinds of dangerous items, but every second spent looking was a second wasted catching up to Blaise, rescuing Desiree.

  Desiree.

  Corey needed to save her. Needed her safe.

  She had come so perilously close to becoming a brutally violated piece of sweet meat for these animals that to lose her now after the two woman destruction team obliterated almost all of them would be the earth shattering end of Corey's world.

  He'd already lost Tim, and Ryan, possibly Peter and Lee too. Losing Desiree would be the cruelest agony of all.

  His feet slapped on the floor, made sloshing sounds as he skittered through blood then he was out of the butcher zone, running across the stage through the fragments of his busted chair.

  Melissa was already gone, out the same way she’d entered, in pursuit of the fleeing Jett.

  Gunshots punched through the night, issuing from the same side of St Agnes Jett and Melissa had departed.

  They rang in Corey's ears, coursing more fear through his veins, but he didn't stop running, he stumbled into the area behind the wall, coming under the archway.

  Only Errol Haskell had a gun of those that made it out to the best of his knowledge, was it him shooting?

  At Desiree? Blaise? Even Melissa?

  The shots-Corey remembered hearing at least three, in quick succession-appeared to coincide with Melissa exiting through the destroyed window.

  Back here was dark, too dark. There was nothing in the way of candles and if it hadn't been for the fact that the back door was standing open letting moonlight in Corey wouldn't have been able to see squat.

  How Haskell managed would have been beyond Corey if the psychotic madman didn't know his hideout inch by inch.

  Blaise on the other hand was more of a conundrum.

  Unless of course Haskell's decision to stash his pistol and use both arms to haul/drag the captive Desiree and consequently move faster enabled him to get out the back door quicker, hence giving light to Blaise.

  Originally this section of church wouldn't have seemed creepy at all, but here in the dark, speckled only minimally by the slice of moonlight from the door standing ajar it was as spooky as fuck to Corey.

  What if it wasn't even Haskell shooting outside? What if he was still loitering in the shadows, hiding, having ambushed Blaise after Jett's warning, ready to strike down anyone else entering the back section.

  That cheery little suggestion buoyed Corey's feet on wings of terror and propelled him across the floor, thumping against the door and skidding outside.

  Relief dropped onto him as if it were enveloped in an enormous water balloon that had been busted open on his cranium.

  Blaise crouched alongside Desiree by one of the big white stone pylons bordering the arched section leading down into the garden/jungle mess.

  No longer confined to a chair Desiree was sitting, knees up, attempting to vigorously rub sensation back into her feet just as Corey had done, her loss of feeling probably much more severe.

  Corey ran across the stone floor, dropped to his knees beside them.

  "Thank..." He didn't believe in God, he had seen far too much evidence of horrendous godless activities and things to think any such entity existed. "Thank fuck! Ah Desiree, damn...I...fuck."

  Desiree favoured him with a pale smile and held out an arm, drawing him into an embrace.

  Crouched beside them with her face splattered with the blood of those she’d wasted Blaise looked like a fearsome warrior woman, the true Blaise, the one that lurked behind the frivolous, carefree, sexually open facade.

  "Where's Haskell?" Corey wanted to know.

  "Bolted. Off into the cemetery. Realised he couldn't make it with Desiree wherever he was planning on going, dropped her and skedaddled before I got to disembowel him."

  "I thought he was going to head for the cars. So that wasn't him shooting then?"

  "Guess not. Someone else. There are still others out here."

  "Shit, well they might have been shooting at Melissa then!"

  "Melissa?" Blaise's eyes narrowed. "Isn't she still in the church?"

  "No, Jett got away, out the window. Melissa went after her."

  "Fuck!" Blaise jumped to her feet
. "Stay here."

  Desiree stood too, slower and with a great deal more effort, using the pylon as a support.

  "No dice," she shook her head. "We're coming with you."

  Again Corey had less than zero desire to sojourn around that side of the church with unknown assailants firing, but the desire to keep Desiree in his sight at all times from now on was far greater than any fear of anything else.

  "That's right," he vowed.

  "Bullshit," Blaise scowled. "You can barely walk yet Desi and neither of you have weapons except… Corey, what the fuck is that?"

  Corey looked at his paltry splintered wooden stake, still gripped in a fist.

  "Chair leg. I busted up my chair to make something to stab Jett's heart out."

  "Nice innovation. Guess that didn't come to fruition."

  "Nope. She was too fucking fast. Grabbed her pants and used them to cover the glass in the window Melissa came through."

  "Yeah. No pants. Why was the bitch half naked?"

  Corey shook his head and felt a huge lump in his throat. He started to speak and mumbled a stream of gibberish.

  "Never mind. Story for a later date. In the meantime I'm going to find Melissa. ME, not you two."

  "Don't waste your time babe. I'll come to you instead."

  As one entity the trio of Corey, Desiree and Blaise swiveled their heads to find the source of the new voice adding to the conversation.

  Melissa stood out in the overgrown plant and rubbish wreckage that constituted the St Agnes back yard, her knife sheathed on her hip, no visible bullet holes adorning her tall shapely form.

  Like Blaise she too looked every bit the fearsome warrior goddess, over six foot tall, long black tresses of hair pouring in midnight waves over her toned shoulders and way down her back, five pointed black star around her left eye and the silver glint of her septum ring sparkling in the moonlight.

  Blood from those she’d massacred inside the walls of St Agnes dotted and streaked the exposed parts of her skin too, some on her face, elsewhere on her arms.

  Her long legs carried her up the couple of steps leading down into the wilderness garden in one lengthy bound to join her friends.