Plebs

by Jim Goforth

  They didn't manage to get out either the front or the back immediately.

  Something flew through the wide open space of the completely glass free busted church window in a flare of orange and landed with a soft thump on a rough heap of discarded clothing.

  Staring stupidly down at the object Corey realised that it hadn't been intended for the clothes pile, it was supposed to strike something solid and hard, like a wall or the floor directly.

  The noise and the impact would have been much louder and immediate for though the object wasn't a dud, it was just slower acting than those who propelled it inside the church intended for it to be.

  A bottle, three quarters full or thereabouts with liquid, with a twist of fabric pushed down its neck, reeking of petrol, creating a makeshift wick that was ablaze with flame.

  It was supposed to strike a wall and explode simultaneously, but it hadn't, its descent and consequent drop into wet bloody clothes somewhat stifled its fast burn, but not for long.

  "Oh shit! Go, go, go!" Blaise urged in a rushed tirade, already snapping into action.

  The lot of them were ignited into immediate action, powering on desperate fast running legs up onto the stage and charging for the darkened room housing the confessional box and Ryan's temporary grave.

  Even Lynn didn't have to be prompted, she knew the misfired Molotov would still go up and the perpetrators of it would follow through with another.

  They did.

  This one reacted how the first burning projectile was supposed to.

  As Blaise blasted through the dark, slamming into the back door, a massive thumping wall of sound erupted from the church interior, the glass bottle weapon smashing against the solid plane of the opposing all.

  Orange glows of hellish intensity blossomed in a giant detonation, some hideously mutated aurora borealis looking like it was in occurrence in the bowels of St Agnes, and heat flared from behind them.

  The door came open especially when they all catapulted against it at once, pouring in a series of rolls, dives, tumbles and graceless sprawls in Corey's case out of the exit point.

  For a terrible split second Corey had been struck by the idea that it may have been blocked from outside, which would have been the smart thing for the Molotov hurlers to do.

  The initial Molotov exploded now, chaining with the second and a third projectile fired through the smashed opening in the side of the Spot.

  Apparently Corey and his trio of femme fatales hadn't quite located all of the firearms left behind in the church.

  Live rounds, loaded weapons, spare ammunition all reacted with the explosions and consequential flames that latched onto wooden sections of the structure, and shots blasted out through crackles, eruptions and pops in an assortment of deadly sounds reverberating in an infernal collage of terrible noise.

  Corey was probably the last out and he clumsily stacked it as he came free of the church, sprawling headlong on the stone pavers outside.

  Blaise and Desiree both managed to completely keep their balance, Melissa hit the ground and rolled, Lynn dove from the doorway, skittering on the hard surface.

  Fortunately for Lynn they hadn't decided to tie her hands or she might have suffered a few collateral facial damages on the unforgiving stone ground, which was probably some of what she deserved.

  As it was she ended up with skinned elbows and grazes, skidding on the pavers.

  The duo of Blaise and Desiree each grabbed a hold of the awkwardly splayed Corey, rushing him down the steps with Melissa doing her own tumble down the flight.

  Behind them the blasts of carnage detonating inside the already well dilapidated St Agnes along with triggered spare rounds sounded like some gargantuan accident in a munitions factory.

  Lynn scampered on hands and knees across the rubble strewn stone floor between the pylons and came down the short set of stairs in a tangle of flailing limbs, thumping to a rest at the bottom.

  The other four, each with at least one hand on one another or more of their gang, backed away as a unified unit, going deeper into the twisted infestation of plants in the overgrown back yard.

  Eyes on the doomed church, they witnessed flames engulfing what they could see of the interior through the open door.

  The rest of the windows around the perimeter of the place shattered outwards in glass showers. The fuel for the gathering fire inside was plentiful and it gained momentum, intensity and power as it fed upon these sources of sustenance.

  The multiple pews inside, either in their original positions or moved to line the walls, were completely constructed of wood, their prevalent presence adding strength to the building blazes continual and rapid growth.

  There were all sorts of things littered all over the church; the busted chair, the lectern, sections of the structure itself. All wood.

  The posters on the walls. Paper.

  All would be curling up, crisping black, falling in peeled sections to the floor.

  Dangling pieces of rope slung to rafters and crossbeams, grabbed by tongues of flame that would lick up them. These would burn like candle wicks until they reached those segments of wood they hung from. The hanging collection of bras and random pieces of clothing would react similarly.

  The host of candles themselves all around the walls, already burning and soon, all the dead bodies stretched out all over the blood soaked floor.

  Hair catching fire, skin broiling, peeling charring, ears, noses, extremities igniting, fat sizzling and cracking, fabric of clothes sparking and assisting in the cooking of the meat inside.

  As for Hayley...

  Well, her own people had come for her before the Plebs, but not to rescue her.

  Instead they essentially sealed her fate, left her to fry alongside the bodies of her fallen comrades.

  Further testament to the words of Raven being out for only herself and caring not one iota about who had to fall or die, regardless of whose side they were on.

  Even those who took her as their leader and followed her callous deadly agenda to the end though it meant death for many of them.

  Clearly the finer points of rescuing fellow renegades or assisting those who'd sworn allegiance to her meant little, or were lost on her when it came to the big picture of eliminating a number of her foes all at once. Sacrifices had to be made and her people were disposable lemmings to send on suicide marches in a manner of speaking.

  Although it hadn't been confirmed in any way, shape or form that she was the protagonist behind the Molotov's, Corey just had an overwhelming, almost completely overbearing feeling that it was the hand of Raven guiding this terrible destruction.

  Just as she had done with the girls camp, using the smarter more human-like Plebs as the leg work men and brute labour.

  Only this time she hadn't required their assistance, just bottles which were readily available in the trash and refuse all around the church, pieces of clothing, and petrol siphoned from any of the vehicles outside.

  Or the vehicles Corey and his friends arrived in.

  They may have been discovered, stationary out on the dirt track.

  Maybe they were now rendered immobile, cutting off any plans of escape via car.

  CHAPTER 47

  "Fucking insane motherfuckers," Blaise murmured in an undertone, a hand on Corey's left forearm while he had his right arm wrapped around Desiree's shoulders.

  Desiree had her arms around his waist, one of her hands holding Blaise's free hand, the other clasping a hand of Melissa.

  Lynn lay motionless at the foot of the stairs.

  She'd either bumped her head against the stones or figured she would just remain right where she was.

  "Holy shit!" Desiree suddenly exclaimed. "Is that...?"

  Corey noticed it too; around about the same time an unearthly frenzied howling, bloodcurdling in its timbre began to resonate through the cluster of devastating fire sounds.

  The Plebs hadn't been tardy in arriving, drawn by the overpowering scent of blood formerly
thick on the air.

  As the quartet watched in morbid fascination a broad pale shape crashed from somewhere on high, falling past the doorway thumping to the floor.

  Corey realised it was a Pleb, dropping out of the roof cavity.

  He looked further up the outside wall and saw that he could see a higher window, perhaps some sort of attic type of area just above where the bloodstained clothing disposal region was; a window he'd failed to see earlier while he and Desiree traversed the perilous back yard.

  The window lacked glass; he could see right inside, could see bare bones of roof trusses, skeletal wooden structures and Plebs lurking in the roof cavity, crouching, skulking, climbing and perching on overhead beams.

  "Damn, they're in the roof! They WERE in the roof!" Blaise gaped. "Cunning fuckers. Only, their weight isn't going to hold. And that place is going to burn."

  "Hopefully with them all inside," Melissa said. "Anyone want to go shut that back door?"

  "You're kidding aren't you?"

  "Just a thought. But if they're going to get out they'll get out."

  As she spoke another Pleb vanished from sight, dropping down rapidly with a cracking sound, evidently coming off the stronger supports, stepping on the weakened rotting ceiling of the meagre lodging room and crashing through to the clothes covered floor below.

  On top of Ryan's body.

  "Shit, Ryan," Corey moaned.

  "Can't do anything for him now babe," Desiree murmured softly. "You tried, but that place is an inferno. Everything is going to go."

  The fire spread to the back section now too, ravenous orange spires of flame engulfing the body of the fallen Pleb, devouring all the scattered flammable rubbish on the floor, taking hold of anything it could destroy.

  Thick roiling clouds of acrid black smoke poured from openings, rose in choking billows, plunging up with the flames as they climbed higher.

  It wasn't just the sheer weight of however many Plebs were able to clamber into the roof cavity, presumably by scaling the building and seeking out broken entry points, that was causing them to capsize from their hiding spots, but also the heat of the fire and the overpowering suffocation of the smoke dropping them to the floor.

  If more of them were inside moving along the beams and pipes that Haskell's crew utilised for hanging decorations, their chances of escaping unscathed were virtually zero.

  The heat inside must have been monumental and with it rising upwards, seizing everything flammable in its fiery embrace of death, any Plebs inside were cooked. Literally.

  Seeing the beasts either dropping into the inferno or somehow trying to figure out how to escape made Corey then question Raven's motives for tossing the Molotov's into the building.

  He was still dead certain that she was the one behind it, but had she been motivated by knowing Corey, Desiree, Blaise and Melissa were inside, having perhaps watched them all re-enter St Agnes together or had she done it knowing the Plebs were congregating there, drawn to the bloodied corpses, preparing to gorge and feast?

  Knowing she could not control the berserk ones, and with them all loose, her plans to use them to her advantage was foiled, so was her act driven by taking out the deadly threat presented not just to her enemies, but herself as well?

  "We better fucking make ourselves scarce," Melissa said.

  Some of the Plebs clustered in the windowed attic partition were leaving via that busted open aperture, scrambling up onto the high badly damaged roof of the church.

  One of them slipped, lost its footing as others jostled to push through and plummeted down the wall, striking the stones below.

  "Good idea," Desiree nodded. "If they start coming down the wall...well, maybe not as graceless as that."

  "Her?" Corey gestured as Lynn.

  "Ah should fucking leave her to burn. Or be Pleb food. Or be burned Pleb food," Melissa grunted. "But yeah, get her up."

  Blaise darted back to where Lynn sprawled, keeping an eye on the blazing church with its window disgorging any Plebs who hadn't tumbled into the fiery tempest.

  As she yanked Lynn up horrendous cracks issued, beams caved in, dumping great burning sections down to disappear in orange hungry mouths of flame and balls of black smoke.

  A Pleb, awash with flame lurched out the window, its bestial head alight giving it the appearance of Ghost Rider.

  Corey's heart jumped up into his mouth, expecting the crisping critter to plunge to the ground, very likely to ignite this entire vegetation choked area he and the girls were standing in.

  It didn't. It managed to crawl up onto the roof, stumbling, dislodging roof sections, piercing the cacophonous din already filling the night with aural horror via an eerie chilling howl.

  Then it pitched off the roof, a blazing ball of fire that now took the fire right among Haskell's cohorts' parked cars.

  "Okay then, we go right, as originally decided," Desiree murmured. "Hurry it up Blaise."

  Corey actually pondered whether they should go left, at least to catch a glimpse of what might be going on there now.

  Raven and her remaining ensemble would have probably retreated into the woods to watch proceedings from a safe distance, maybe with a gun trained on the window in case somebody jumped out in a panic.

  Probably aiming at the front door.

  Nobody had been at the back though which was more convincing to Corey that the motivation might be more Pleb related.

  Or no eyes on the back door was an oversight. A bit of a blunder.

  Or they'd expected the first Molotov to explode on impact. Which wouldn't have given anybody a real chance to escape, front door, back door or otherwise.

  They probably weren't expecting a char grilled Pleb to swan dive off the St Agnes roof and land amongst their modes of transport.

  That must have set a cat among the pigeons.

  Blaise was back, Lynn in tow.

  "You got legs, you use 'em," Blaise advised. "You don't keep up, too bad."

  "Bet you're glad you didn't draw the straw to get left behind now aren't you?" Melissa sneered.

  Glowering Lynn muttered something inaudible, muffled behind her sleeve gag.

  They cut through the long grass, the bushes, the trees populating the former church garden back yard, almost following the same route previously undertaken by Desiree and Corey only this time there were no plans to leave the woods.

  Soon enough the blaze might even make it to the trailer, there was a possibility it was going to span further.

  The litter filled back yard was an inferno waiting to happen, its unkempt realms an unlit fire just prime to be ignited and incinerated.

  Melissa led the way, Blaise in tow with Lynn. Desiree and Corey came next, almost subconsciously reaching out to hold hands as they swept through the woods.

  They didn't keep right on the fringes of the forest where they may have become visible to anyone on the trailers side of the church, but they didn't go too deep in either; just enough to hope they were undercover.

  All of them flung random glances at the burning Spot as they flanked it from a distance, though the angled park of the truck and its trailer with back doors still hanging open obscured a lot of visibility of the scene.

  As they moved further along, none of them running, yet not exactly strolling casually, more of the burning building was exposed to see. Every single window, even those that were once boarded up or covered to keep elements and prying eyes out blazed bright fiery orange, liberally doused with black plumes of smoke.

  The fire had eaten well and truly into the roof, exacerbated by the idiotic hanging adornments the hoodlums saw fit to keep as trophies and smoke poured out of holes in the roof too, the dense smell of it spreading like a cloying, stifling shroud over everything.

  The noise was incredible, so many different things combining in a nightmare soundtrack.

  Corey could hear shouting in there too, maybe from the side with the cars, but couldn't identify who, or what was being said.

  Soon they
were far enough away that the noise faded away to a fairly large extent, just a background hubbub of clamour, through the pervasive burning aroma persisted.

  Now the noise they made sounded louder, sounding like they were crashing through the undergrowth, snapping twigs, whipping against tree branches.

  No stalking Plebs sprang from hiding to attack.

  Was it possible they'd all swarmed as a pack to rush to the church?

  To the feast. To the unexpected barbecue, and got themselves barbecued.

  Melissa slowed the pace now and everyone did the same.

  Lynn babbled something into her gag, a jumble of words.

  "What? Can't fucking understand you. You've got something in your mouth," Blaise snorted.

  "You damn idiot," Melissa fired at Lynn. "You aren't tied up, take it out yourself. I think the point where worrying you're going to scream is long past. Do it now though and I'll slit your throat."

  Lynn looked as though she was a bit confused, not certain whether removing the gag or screaming was the action that was going to get a knife run across her neck.

  She did neither.

  "Scream and I'll cut your head off," Melissa sighed for clarification and Lynn hastened to get the impromptu gag free.

  "Now what the hell were you blithering about?" Blaise wanted to know.

  "Never mind. You answered the question anyway."

  "Which was?"

  "I wanted to know if the gag was necessary. I swear I'm not going to scream."

  She seemed pretty confident now, even cocky with the deduction that maybe the Plebs weren't going to accost them; maybe they were all in the vicinity of the church.

  Since Blaise actually bothered to come get her to haul her away from the danger zone and literal hot bed of Pleb activity maybe she was in the clear after all.

  "Good for you. I'm happy if you don't talk either."

  Taking that advice on board Lynn descended into silence as did the rest of them.

  Just because no stray Plebs had yet surfaced didn't mean they weren't going to and there were still strong chances of running into others out here too, for example Haskell might not have ventured too far out into the cemetery before circling back around.