Plebs

by Jim Goforth

"Get Jett?"

  "Sadly, nope. I got down before I got got."

  "Goddamn bare ass bitch," Blaise spat, probably aware of the irony of that off the cuff remark, but not relenting on it.

  "Yeah, someone started blasting at me as soon as I dropped out the window after her. Guess there's some more of them still in the woods." Melissa said. "And obviously still armed."

  "There's gotta be some of the guns inside," Corey piped up. "Most of those fools laid down their weapons for the show since none of us held captive were presenting much of a threat."

  "Show?" Melissa raised the eyebrow above the black star. "Jett dancing around bare ass? Or Jodie fucking a corpse?"

  "The corpse was Ryan," Desiree said softly, seeing the pain flare in Corey's eyes. "Jett had her go while he was still alive."

  "Motherfuck!" Melissa scowled, her fingers flexing and unflexing over the handle of the knife she had already unleashed much deadly carnage with already. "Those sick fucks."

  "Let's get inside," Blaise advised. "Get us some of those weapons. We'll play catch up stories later. We can't stay long in there though, that massive amount of blood in there is going to be filling the air like an irresistible homing beacon for the Plebs still roaming."

  "Shit," Corey moaned. "I was kinda hoping they were all gone by now."

  "No such luck hun," Melissa shook her head. "Some of them have bought it from various sources, but there's plenty more. And Blaise is right; this despicable church isn't going to be a safe haven for anybody any longer."

  "Hopefully Errol doesn't see it that way and comes back to get slaughtered by then," Corey murmured, though he knew that everyone here, himself included, wanted to bring death to Haskell personally.

  If Melissa had been inclined to ask whether Blaise was able to catch Errol beforehand she didn't deign to do so now, considering Corey's wishful thinking out loud answered the unasked question in any event.

  "And have those mutant fucks steal the pleasure any single one of us will get from taking that piece of shits life from him in as painful a manner as possible?" Blaise queried. "Surely you jest."

  "Enough chatter," Melissa commanded. "Inside."

  Blaise lead the way and Corey realised she had a flashlight, the same one used to transfix Britt's killer of a Pleb while Desiree slashed its throat open. It was switched on now, guiding them through the dark room behind the main body of the church.

  Desiree followed Blaise through the door then Corey with Melissa bringing up the rear, pulling the door shut behind her.

  They may not have been wanting to remain too long in the slaughterhouse with blood fumes trailing out across the land to signal the Plebs like a dinner bell to a banquet, but neither did they want to be surprised by any unexpected visitors sneaking in the back door whilst they ransacked the joint for firearms.

  Especially if Haskell decided to sneak back.

  Hoping for another bite at the cherries he had been denied.

  Or at least to put bullets in some of his foes.

  The beam of Blaise's flashlight played up the wall and throughout the back area of St Agnes.

  "What a fucking mess," she whistled, which was probably an understatement.

  This section was possibly on a par for upkeep with the garden outside and was in an even worse state of disrepair than the larger body.

  The flashlight didn't showcase all of its failings and inadequacies, but what it displayed as Blaise played its moderate beam around showed a ceiling-less room, the skeletal roof-work and supports visible, spider webs in massive proliferation, and dust in abundance.

  What had become of the ceiling itself was anybody's guess, perhaps rotted and fallen away for there were segments of broken things underfoot which could well have been ex-ceiling.

  Jumbles of old electrical wires hung erratically from both the gaping roof cavity and holes in the walls. These walls were slabs of stone that bore more of the profane scribblings of Haskell's hordes along with copious splashes of rust coloured substances.

  The confessional box, if indeed it could be termed that any more was as Corey suspected back here, just beyond the arched doorway visible from the rest of the church under normal illuminated circumstances.

  To their left stood another door which probably housed a meagre room.

  Knowing how long Errol Haskell and his fellow lunatics had been in control and in possession of this abandoned property Corey wasn't too excited to see what lay beyond the simple door.

  "What's in there?" Blaise asked him as if he knew.

  "Not a clue. My guess, Father McCoy slept in there from time to time."

  "Probably with young boys right?" Blaise snorted. "Any chance of some of Haskell's creeps lurking in there?"

  "Shit, hadn't thought of that. Thanks for putting that in my head." Corey pictured Errol Haskell hunkered down in the dark behind the door, gun pointed, hearing their voices, ready to discharge it if anybody entered the room. "Let's get the weapons first then check."

  Melissa waited for nothing. She strode through the glow of Blaise's flashlight and kicked the door with a mighty blow, blasting it open.

  No gun brandishing psycho Haskell lurked inside.

  Nobody was inside.

  "Nothing," Melissa confirmed, as Blaise guided the light around the rest of the area.

  Meagre was perhaps high praise for this room. It was bare of furniture, just home to a mass of clothing strewn arbitrarily, most of it covered in dark stains, crusted and some decaying.

  Like all other walls in the place these ones were emblazoned with crude phrases and symbols and painted with irregular blood splatters, chipped by possible bullet holes and littered with other marks of damage.

  Blaise directed her flashlight upwards; the ceiling was partially intact in here, but still extensively damaged, missing plenty of boards and segments.

  There were quite a few spots large enough for a person; even Haskell's size or bigger to fit through.

  "Up there?" Blaise queried.

  "You serious?" Corey hoped she wasn't serious. If Haskell was cornered up there in the roof then he wasn't going to hope he could leave one of his dream victims alive, he would just shoot them all.

  "How would he, or anyone, get up there?" Desiree said. "There's no furniture in here, nothing to assist in getting up into that cavity."

  "If he was high, maybe he flew."

  "Besides," Desiree persisted, ignoring Blaise's remark. "That's a fucking death trap. Even these maniacs can't be stupid enough to think that pitiful ceiling would hold."

  "Good point. We're wasting time," Melissa said. "Nothing and nobody here."

  The quartet continued into the church that had become an abattoir, still glowing with the unearthly illumination cast by the many candles.

  CHAPTER 45

  Corey had so many questions for the damaging duo who’d burst through the stained glass windows like wrathful avenging angels that he didn't know where to begin.

  So he tossed out a random one as the four split up to search the area, wanting to talk mostly to distract himself from the death scene, the death smells, the sights of death and principally the headless dead Ryan.

  "Why so many Plebs? That house they live in, it didn't really seem that big. How the hell can there be so many of them?"

  A harsh laugh issued from Melissa as she strode down the left hand wall with the obvious intention of checking the status of those couple of folk who were probably still alive. After all, Pierced Girl, Lynn and Cooper's concubine hadn't received mortal injuries unless the slice that opened the latter’s face up caused her to bleed out.

  "There's much more to that house than meets the eye. The uncontrollable ones, the wild bestial ones, the freaks with an insatiable taste for human flesh live under the house, down underground. It's only those with a rudimentary knowledge of civilization, the English language, the concept of clothes, basic tools, barter systems and shit like that who actually reside in the house. The ones gone wrong, the Grubel fuck ups and awry
experiments have to be kept down in the caves, as it were."

  "And they're here now, the freaks?" Corey asked stupidly, though he knew of course they were.

  The Plebs who chased he and Tim and Lee had been frightening brutes, but nothing like the monsters that’d swarmed from the truck.

  "Yes. No idea how Raven and Errol managed to get them into the truck, but I bet they killed a lot of the smarter ones, mildly logical ones while they were all locked up together. That's why Raven can't reason with them anymore."

  Melissa stooped alongside Pierced Girl's chunky prone shape and felt for a pulse.

  "Got a live one here," she announced. “Stupid Hayley. Needs to pick her allegiances a little better in future."

  "Best she doesn't get a chance at a future," Blaise advised, patting down dead bodies, searching through their clothing as if she were doing nothing more mundane than washing the dishes. "None of them can be trusted. They are all accountable for burning down the village and killing all the others."

  "Lynn's still breathing too, but then again she only got her ass knocked out. Got off lightest of all so far."

  "So far." Blaise echoed Melissa with a portentous threat hanging in her voice.

  Corey looked under the pews lining the walls and struck gold. A couple of pistols and a shotgun were stashed here, none of them any of the firearms brought from his house, but more substantial weaponry than the couple of knives the foursome had between them.

  Melissa and Blaise may have been brutally efficient and just downright lethal with twin sets of blades in their hands, but in the overall scheme of things they had taken the congregation inside the church by sheer surprise and that element provided them the ability to gain the upper hand and wreak bloody havoc before the stunned assembly could react.

  It wouldn't be quite the same for future endeavours when those outside had guns still -Errol Haskell and at least one other for sure- while only Melissa and Blaise had knives and Corey had a makeshift stake made of a broken chair leg.

  Acknowledging that he still held that infernal item clasped like a lucky charm, he tossed it away into the dark recesses of St Agnes and scrambled under the pews.

  "I've got guns!" he announced.

  "Me too," Melissa said.

  She had known where to look all along for she'd seen two of the men she ruthlessly eliminated trying to get them out from their stash spot, amidst the melee.

  "Two pistols," She confirmed. "What have you got Corey?"

  "Two hand guns. A shotgun. All loaded."

  "Nice. A pistol apiece. Shotty to Blaise."

  "I'm guessing everyone lost their original guns along the way," Corey mused.

  "Dropped mine in a scrap with some Plebs," Melissa replied.

  "Mine are stashed outside, but the Plebs didn't give me much of an opportunity to go retrieve them," Blaise said, reaching out with a nod for the shotgun and pistol Corey extended to her.

  "How the hell did you avoid all those freaks busting out of the truck in the first place?" Corey wanted to know. "You were shot; you fell right into the middle of them."

  "Nah didn't get shot. Just clipped," Blaise smiled, a big smile with shades of the mischievous Blaise lurking in the expression. "I landed ON the Plebs, not amongst them. Just kinda crowd surfed them up as they came out, managed to get up the wall of the truck inside and sort of stuck up there, trying to hold myself between the wall and the ceiling until they all evacuated. Once they were out I got as far into the bowels of the trailer as I could. I knew there was no way in hell they were coming back in once they'd tasted freedom so I figured I was pretty sweet in there."

  "Well I'll be damned," Desiree grinned. "I thought you were dead too babe, thought they'd just ripped you up and devoured you."

  "Haha, not me. I'm hard to keep down," Blaise laughed. "Couldn't find my damn rifle again though, I know I dropped that."

  "A Pleb took it," Corey told her. "Managed to shoot himself with it."

  "Shit, wish I'da been able to see that. Slapstick comedy."

  Melissa walked over to join them and handed one of her newly obtained pistols to Desiree.

  "Well, here's the plan," she said. "We've got five guns, but limited ammo. Whatever is in each weapon is it. I don't think I have to tell any of you lot, no shooting at shadows, no wasting bullets on shit that doesn't need to be shot. So what we need to do is get back to our cars where we left the rest of the weaponry and ammunition and shit, and arm up like soldiers."

  "Fuck, here's a better plan," said Corey. "If we make it to the cars we jump in and drive the merry fuck out of here!"

  "No." Melissa scowled at him and the mean set of her face was ominous, making Corey wish he hadn't opened his mouth though he had more to say and ultimately did so anyway.

  "Damn, how many more people have to die?"

  "All of THEM," Blaise said emphatically, her last word pronounced and obvious. "In any case, do you want to leave the rest of your friends behind for these nutters? Worse, the mental cases that are the Plebs?"

  "Well, no...But shit how do I know anybody is left alive out there? There are Plebs everywhere, or were...Haskell and Raven's thugs have got guns....shit."

  "We've survived so far, and that's including having run ins with Plebs. One can be very resourceful and resilient in life and death situations. I'm sure Lee and Pete have found a way to stay one step ahead of all the threats."

  "I hope," Corey hoped. "Lee almost got his ticket cancelled already."

  "Yeah, almost," Melissa pointed out. "But he got away. He and Tash. And after getting nabbed like that you would think that he'd be wiser now. I know Tasha sure will be."

  "They don't have guns any more though," Corey pressed. "Those goons disarmed them prior to kicking the crap out of them."

  "Don't stress about them Corey, they'll be resilient. Besides wouldn't you rather know for certain one way or the other rather than just hauling ass out of here and leaving them behind altogether?"

  "Yeah but...not everybody is a Terminator like you two."

  "Like us three," Blaise grinned, encompassing Desiree in that. "The only reason Desi wasn't slicing and dicing as well is because she was all tied up in that fucking chair!"

  "Shut up Blaise."

  Corey glanced at Desiree. She gave him a steady smile then became interested in checking how many rounds were in her firearm, though Corey was pretty certain Melissa had already done that.

  He already knew that what Blaise was saying was the truth, watching Desiree virtually decapitate the Pleb in the woods and witnessing how she had gone after Pat Howard was proof to him of that, he just wasn’t so sure he wanted to see that ruthless violent streak in her unleashed to maximum capacity, the way he’d witnessed Blaise and Melissa's.

  One thing was for sure, if it had been all three of the women in action inside St Agnes Corey seriously doubted there would be any survivors left to tell the tale.

  "And what happens if we get ambushed by an army of Plebs at once? We won't have the ammo to take them all out, and even if we do then we won't have much left to combat anyone else that happens to come at us. Errol, Jett or Raven? Vickerman? Assuming those last two haven't been chomped already? Or hopefully taken out by one of our guys? If any of them are still in the land of the living," Corey tacked the last bit onto his flood of questions, attempting to quell the doubt that he felt and keep it out of his voice altogether.

  "Oh you can bet Raven will still be alive out there," Blaise asserted, doing Corey's confidence no wonders at all.

  Along with Errol Haskell, Raven was the main person Corey wanted well and truly out of the picture. Those two posed the biggest and most direct threats to not just him and Desiree, but every single one of them.

  "She has excellent survival skills, whatever other faults she has and she will automatically go into that mode," Blaise elaborated unnecessarily.

  "You saw an example of that already Corey," Desiree said. "With the Plebs and Serena. She will manipulate what she can in her env
ironment, surroundings, people, inanimate objects, whatever. She will use whatever and whoever to stay alive, to achieve the best end result for Raven. Nobody but Jett means anything to Raven and she will stomp on, walk over, stab, shoot, strangle whoever is on her way."

  "Therefore to answer your question Corey," Melissa's voice rang out from halfway down the church where she was stooped over near a body, relieving it of a sheathed knife. "We'll have insurance. If the Plebs surround us in that fashion we will do exactly what Raven did."

  "Cut out somebody's guts and toss them to the Plebs? Who?"

  Melissa walked back up the aisle and paused alongside Lynn's unconscious figure.

  She prodded her in the ribs with the toe of her boot. Lynn groaned.

  "Wake up Sleeping Ugly," Melissa urged in a mocking tone. "There’s also Hayley and Whit with the gashed open face, but the first can't walk and I think the second's dead."

  Beginning to stir Lynn struggled to roll over on her back, eventually succeeding, still groaning and mumbling.

  Blaise shone the flashlight right in her face, completely unnecessarily.

  The candles were still burning, the illumination they gave off was abundant albeit continually jumpy and erratic, making shadows lengthen then shorten on the walls.

  "What happened? Where's...shit, get that damn light out of my face!"

  Blaise did so, but not because she was asked to, she had done what she needed.

  "I'll tell you what happened. You were the lucky winner who survived. So you win the prize."

  "What prize?" Lynn made an effort to sit up.

  She managed and then she noticed who the other people in the church with her were, realised she was still in the place of massacre.

  Her face blanched white when it became apparent that none of the folk allied with her were either alive or present.

  "The prize of being Pleb bait if the occasion calls for it."

  "That's no prize!" Lynn squealed.

  "You're no fucking prize either. All of you idiot girls who threw in with Raven, you've done this to yourself; you brought this upon yourself," Blaise blasted.

  "Alternatively," Melissa said, "you can stay here, but for that to be the case I would have to break your legs or somehow make sure you can't walk."