by Jim Goforth
He stooped, hauled the prone Corey up and slammed Somerset's spine against the headstone, filling Corey's world with a starburst of agony.
'We're meant to win this,' Melissa's voice whispered in his mind. 'Just you wait and see.'
'Well fuck,' Corey thought. 'I think I'll be dead before then. Bad idea not to get out of here when I had the chance. Vickerman is going to dismantle me and I can't even get a hand on my guns...’
Vickerman methodically began to deliver gut wrenching punches to Corey's midriff, blasting away his futile attempts to block and blows or even go for his weapons.
He didn't seem concerned that Corey had pistols in his belt, he wasn't giving him a chance to get to them anyway.
'This is your initiation, your final test.'
Prick of a test, Corey inwardly moaned, feeling like his guts had just been minced into ground beef.
'Push through,' Blaise's seductive voice urged. 'Push through that final obstacle.'
Corey pushed through.
Forget thoughts of a fair fight, this wasn't that. This was about self-preservation. Survival. Winning by any means. And staying alive.
Corey kicked Vickerman right between the legs, swinging a vicious blow designed to turn the brute’s cojones into nut jelly.
The squeal that ensued sounded like that of a dying pig.
Letting go of Corey with the one meaty paw he'd used to hold the unfortunate lad against the headstone while he worked callous punches with the other Vickerman stumbled and toppled away.
CHAPTER 53
Breathless and aching, Corey slid down the headstone to his butt on the ground.
Bit of payback for Jett's knee in his balls, he thought, as he watched Vickerman writhe in agony.
He pulled out a pistol and aimed it at the thug.
Vickerman finally noticed this and ceased his graceless clumsy pain dance, wincing.
"Where's your fuckwit friends, dickface?" Corey asked him.
"Fuck off Somerset."
"I've got no problem shooting your dick off. Where are they?"
"Fuck you. Fucking girl. Kicking a guy in the nads."
"Shut up crybaby. You're no man yourself bitch. Take me to the others or die. I don't care which."
Corey cocked the hammer. The click sounded loud and ominous.
"First shot. Right in the balls. Second, in the leg. Maybe you'll bleed out; maybe you'll go into shock. Maybe you will lay here on the ground surrounded by spirits of the dead you've fucked with, taking a lot longer to die than you might think. Shit, getting shot in the cock you probably wouldn't die at all, you would just lay there in the most immense pain you can imagine.
You think getting kicked in the crackers is bad? Imagine a bullet tearing through your junk, maybe ripping it clean off then puncturing your sac. Might even exit right out your asshole. Wouldn't that be fun Vickerman?"
Vickerman groaned, wincing as if he could feel that already, and picturing it would in fact not be fun at all.
"Alright Somerset, you win. I'll take you to the others."
"That's the attitude. No fucking around either. You think I'm kidding about bullet castration and you're kidding yourself. After the shit that's gone down tonight I'm beyond caring about what the fuck happens to you animals so I dare you to give me just one little excuse."
"Whatever Somerset. I said I'd take you to 'em. Take it easy."
Standing up Corey kept his gun trained on Vickerman's bulk, feeling the wrenches and complaints from his stomach muscles and chest.
He felt like he must be a mass of bruises from head to toe. He'd taken so many knocks to the head tonight he wouldn't be surprised to discover he was brain damaged and Vickerman's latest assault of body blows no doubt added a host more bruises to the tally.
"Where are they then?"
"You'll see."
"No fucking tricks Vickerman."
"No tricks. You'll see. They're in a crypt."
"A crypt?" Corey echoed ludicrously though in effect it wasn't a ridiculous notion at all. It would be an ideal hiding place for a bunch of murderous ghouls.
"Did I stutter? Yeah, a crypt." Vickerman retorted. "Where you're gonna end up. Only not breathing."
"You talk a lot of trash for a guy on the wrong end of a gun."
Vickerman scowled, but didn't add anything more.
He slowly started walking towards Corey.
"What are you doing dickhead?"
"They're down that way," Vickerman gesticulated out into the maze of mausoleums, crypts, graves and headstones that spanned out behind the place Corey had come to rest and consequently been ambushed after his unexpected downhill slide. "You want to go down there don't you?"
"Sure," Corey answered warily.
This was too easy; Vickerman was all too immediately accommodating without putting up any resistance.
It disconcerted Corey that the graveyard lurker was armed with no instantly visible weapon despite the fact that he was the one who dashed off into the cemetery wielding both bags of weaponry.
He eyed Vickerman with distrust as Haskell's giant muscular right hand man stalked past him, pinning him with dangerous eyes as well.
Should just shoot him now Corey, letting him live longer than necessary is going to have bad repercussions...
Involuntarily he tensed up as Vickerman passed and began down some semblance of a path leading between graves, half expecting to be rushed and disarmed.
Nothing like that happened; Vickerman merely lumbered along the cobblestone type of layout, the dirty white of them nicely reflecting the moonlight to afford some decent illumination.
Nonetheless some of the crypts were big towering monoliths that cast large elongated shadows and it was a matter of traipsing from patches of dark to more radiated spots, and although it was spooky and unnerving in the spots of darkness it was a lot more conspicuous in the light and that's where Corey felt most vulnerable.
He could imagine Errol, Raven and Jett skulking among the myriad monuments-in a crypt?-waiting and watching. Fully aware he was coming.
He knew Vickerman was intentionally leading him into a trap. If he was indeed taking Corey to a crypt it wouldn't be one his trio of lunatic cohorts were allegedly hiding in.
It might be near enough for them to acknowledge he was approaching. 'Think of this as an initiation.'
A stupid irrational though snuck into Corey's mind as he kept a safe distance behind Vickerman, walking down the cemetery paths.
'What if...just what if ALL of them...Melissa, Desiree and Blaise...were actually in this together?’ It was so ludicrously crazy that it wasn't impossible was it?
He'd seen neither hide nor hair of them since they'd all parted company at the top of the slope, maybe they were watching like they'd said they would be, but weren't about to come out and help.
Perhaps they’d instead returned to the grounds of St Agnes to finish off the pitiful Lee and Dennis. Neither one of them would offer much resistance.
Leaving Corey to wander directly into a snake pit of vipers to be bitten to death by their four sets of poisonous fangs.
Shit, that's something the old Corey would allow to seep into his brain, not the new.
Not this time. Not the prospective Fourth Rider of the Apocalypse.
Not this time. It's time to bring the Apocalypse to these motherfuckers.
Corey nodded resolutely.
He knew the three warrior goddesses were out there still.
His latest notion was the most ridiculous concept his thumped-too-often head conjured up yet.
Those three wanted to bring the Apocalypse to Raven and Errol more than anybody.
'We're meant to win this Corey. Just wait and see.'
Vickerman ambled between monuments, even stepped right on graves without regard, some of them even sinking beneath his feet, those not comprehensively encased in protective crypts or stone coverings.
He didn't seem too concerned about Corey trailing cautiously after him.
"Lotta fucking dead folk in this place Somerset," he remarked in a booming voice that reverberated around the cemetery in an echo that bounced from monument to monument, making Corey shrink, sending chills down his spine.
"Keep your voice down!" he hissed.
"Reckon you'll be joining these dead folk pretty soon Somerset," Vickerman carried on in that giant resonating voice.
"I'll fucking shoot you in the back of the head!"
"You won't shoot shit," Vickerman sneered and suddenly dove to the left, vanishing behind a towering stone monumental crypt with an arched top and a crumbling cross perched on it.
'Fuck!' Corey froze. He'd been half expecting something like that to happen, but now that it actually had he was taken so off guard by it that his reaction was to freeze stupidly like one of the stone statues he shared the graveyard with.
More crypts approximately the same size or larger, just differently shaped and designed continued to march along the same pathway as the one Vickerman made his escape behind.
He could be rapidly moving down the line, crouching in the plethora of shadows their big silent bulks afforded or he could be waiting just behind that first one, ready to pounce on Corey, guns or otherwise.
Maybe that was where he left the bags of weaponry and he was now arming himself to the teeth.
This was fucked. Corey was fucked. He knew that.
Instead of lunging behind the monument he ducked into the mouth of the crypt and secreted himself against the door, his back to it.
It felt hard, solid and unbudging.
He'd noticed along the way that most of the crypts were pretty firmly closed, either with doors of stone or marble, some even further shielded by wrought iron gates or bars on them.
If Errol, Raven and Jett were genuinely loitering in some crypt somewhere then they would have had to stumble across an open one or a weakened entry point.
They wouldn't have had too much time to force one of these doors open.
If they were built to keep the dead in...
Corey listened hard. Tried to pick up any sounds of motion. Footsteps.
He half wished the crypt door would fall open, he would fall inside and stay firmly ensconced in there until all of this was over.
Better to hang out with some long dead individual for a few hours rather than join them for eternity.
He heard a rush of sound, a rustling, the brush of fabric against stone.
He jumped out of his crypt mouth and the grinning malicious face of Raven loomed up before him.
"Hi Corny. Die Corny."
She stabbed him.
Almost as if he had some sort of premonition that something horrible was waiting in store for him he stepped back, almost in the same motion as jumping out.
The plunging blade tore through his jacket, the tip of it stabbing him in the ribs.
Corey inadvertently opened his fingers in a spasm of shock, spilling out his gun to clatter on stones and away in the shadows.
For a second he thought he'd been mortally wounded until he realised the blade was mostly caught in his jacket, the point in his flesh, but not deep.
He swung his elbow around and the motion jerked his jacket ripping the haft of the weapon from Raven's grip.
It also caused the tip of the blade to score a fresh line of pain along his ribs, a hot fiery trail of agony that added to the misery inflicted by Vickerman's boots. He started to step out and grab for the other gun.
The jacket was seized from behind, bundled up over his head and he was slammed down onto the stones. He landed atop the knife, dislodging its tip from his skin.
"She said die Somercunt, now do as she said!" Errol Haskell was there too.
He thumped his bulk onto Corey's back, grinding him into the rock floor.
Corey felt another blade, this one laying across his throat, again his long locks wrenched up in a firm fist, pulling his head roughly back.
"Wait, get his pants off," Jett's voice sounded too. "I want to fuck him. Cut him when I cum."
"You fucking serious you horny bitch? Here? You know those other crazy bitches are gonna be here too somewhere."
"Get him in the crypt. I want Desiree to know I fucked her man and he died with his cock in me."
"Yeah, I like it," Vickerman sneered smugly. "And I'm going to smack him in the balls with a fucking rock at the same time. Little bastard kicked me right in the jewels."
"Idiots," Errol snorted, but he seemed to be contemplating the idea. "Where's your hot ass girlfriends Scummerset?"
"Gone," Corey grated out.
"Gone where?"
"They bailed."
"Bullshit. Leaving you behind?"
"No chance," Raven snarled. "Nobody's buying that shit Corny."
"Buy what you want Raven. It's over. You win, they're gone. Nobody but me here."
"Is that so? Where have they gone then? Back to your house? They've got nowhere else to go do they?"
"I doubt it. They're finished with me."
"You’re shitting me."
"No," Corey choked out, hitting on his next line of thought. "Lee almost got us killed. All of us. I backed him and they left me. My funeral, they said."
"Fuck this talking," Jett grated impatiently. "Get him inside. Let me have him."
"You're fucking lying Corny," Raven crouched in front of him. She had another knife; she must have been mass producing them for every time she lost or misplaced one she had another one reappear. "You expect me to believe a word you say?"
"I don't care Raven, it's finished. I'm finished, they're finished with me, all there is left is Lee and me, there's nothing left."
Errol stared at Raven then Vickerman who shrugged and Jett who jerked her thumb in the direction of rows of crypts back behind this path Corey sprawled on.
"Well then Corny they might be done with you, but I know sure as shit they aren't done with us, and I'm not done with them. See I know something about our three absent lady friends that you obviously don't."
"What's that?" Corey grunted.
"Yeah, what about them?" Errol added.
"Guess I should have told you earlier," Raven said, though not sounding particularly repentant. "Our friends aren't going to quit because that isn't their nature to give up without getting their target."
"What are you blithering about?"
"Looks like sexy little Desiree didn't trust you enough to tell you hey Corny? Raven sounded delighted to think she had one up on him. "Maybe she is done with you."
“Tell him what? Tell me fucking what?" Errol sounded annoyed. "What is this shit?"
"Blaise is Black Widow Justice, and the other two are the Twilight/Toxic Twins, whatever else they got called in the news," Jett interjected, stealing Raven's thunder, a ringing note of impatience in her voice.
Errol absentmindedly let go of Corey's hair and gaped at Jett, then Raven.
"Fucking...what? The vengeance killers?"
"The ones and only," Raven confirmed. "So now you know why they won't relent."
"Don't you think that's something you should have fucking told me? Shit! Fucking shit!"
"Doesn't really matter anyway does it?"
"Not really. You're all dead anyway," Said Blaise as she vaulted down from the top arch of the crypt behind, feet clicking onto the stone pathway.
She hooked an arm around Errol's throat, dragging him backwards off Corey.
As Corey rolled onto his side he saw a silhouette perched atop a high fat stone monument opposite the nearest rows of crypts.
It straightened and dropped down behind Raven, a flashing glint momentarily shining in the moonlight as it came down.
Desiree. Echoing Blaise's chokehold on Errol with a snaking arm wrapping around Raven's neck in a tight band.
Jett had her shotgun. Then she had Melissa dropping feet first onto her shoulders and smashing her to the rocky path.
Corey and Vickerman both lunged for the shotgun, Vickerman a whisker closer.
Corey closed
his hand around a loose section of stone.
Vickerman came down.
Corey's rock filled fist came up into Vickerman's face.
The thug sprawled ungainly spitting blood and fragments of teeth.
Corey scooped up the shotgun and slammed the butt of it against Vickerman's jaw.
He went limp.
Haskell tried to fling Blaise from around his neck, tried to slam her against the hard surface of the crypts like he'd done to Dennis King with a tree.
Not this time.
Blaise's other hand was loaded with her wicked death dealing blade. She punched its point up in a savage thrust into Errol Haskell's left armpit.
His scream of agony was eerily high pitched and extremely girlish.
Pulling out the bloodstained knife, Blaise stabbed him in the right armpit and dropped him against the door of the crypt.
"Look at this," she grinned. "You've got me all to yourself now Errol. What do you think we should do?"
Desiree's arm was like a steel band around Raven's throat.
"And you have me Raven. Isn't this what you always wanted?" She whispered malevolently into her captives’ ear.
The expression blossoming on Raven's dark face suggested otherwise, at least not like this.
Not unless the roles were reversed and it was Raven holding the object of her desire prisoner, one arm encircling her throat, her other hand running lascivious trails over Desiree's heavenly body.
But that wasn't the case.
The tide had turned.
Melissa towered over the downed figure of Jett, one booted foot pressed to her throat.
"Hope you don't think we'd abandoned you here Corey," she directed at Corey. "And apologies for any rough treatment you had to endure. I think you'll agree the end result is going to be rewarding."
Errol hunched against the crypt door, hands clapped under his punctured armpits trying to stem the flow of blood, his visage a twisted wreckage of pained expressions.
He almost looked pitiful; Corey almost felt a twinge of sorrow for him. Almost.
Until he remembered Haskell cruelly yanking on the rope tight around Desiree's neck.
Remembered Haskell shooting Pete, watching his face disappear in a crimson cloud.