Plebs

by Jim Goforth

  Only once they were past and up near the grave where Vickerman sprang up to assault Corey did the packs of Plebs move.

  Not rushing furiously like crazy rabid animals, but stalking in purposefully, in twos, threes and fours, surrounding the screaming, pleading kicking foursome of Errol, Raven, Jett and Vickerman.

  Further up the slope at the fringe where the trees began Melissa, Desiree, Blaise and Corey stopped and turned around to gaze back down among the crypts.

  It was virtually impossible to see anything of the quartet of homicidal killers; they were buried beneath a sea of slavering Plebs, but the sounds that carried up the hillside were plentiful and terrible.

  Screams and dying shrieks erupted amongst bestial growling, snarling, flesh tearing and ripping, bones cracking.

  Blood showered, looking like a black fountain except where rising droplets caught the moonlight and briefly glowed red before turning black again as they fell away in the shadows.

  "Come on," Desiree urged and the foursome turned back into the woods, retracing the steps back through the dark quiescence of the cemetery that brought them to the nightmares ultimate conclusion.

  They found Lee and Dennis where they’d left them, albeit sitting under the trees away from the broken bodies of the two girls, both drenched and caked in blood, the pair of them side by side and passing a joint back and forth.

  Lee looked blank and numb, but cocooned in his reality, his alter world where being stoned brought him tranquility and shielded him from the horror of this world.

  Dennis saw them first and sprang up so rapidly he almost fell head over heels.

  His gaping amazed expression looked like he didn't know whether to hug them, cry, laugh or wonder if his stoned existence somehow dreamed them into life.

  "You're...? You...Is it really you...? Did you...?"

  "We won this one Dennis," Blaise smiled wryly. "It's over."

  Lee gaped as well, his jaw hanging slackly, his eyes boggling. He had no words.

  "You guys ready to go home? We'll get the van and take you home." Melissa said. "Then we part ways."

  "Corey?" Lee queried finally.

  "Not me," Corey replied softly. "I've got a new purpose Lee, I've got a calling. I've got meaning. This is only the end of this chapter. The beginning of another."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I can't go back. I'll only be home long enough to get essentials, clean out my accounts and cash up the gang, and we'll be hitting the road. Wherever it takes us."

  "We? Who?"

  "Us," Desiree grinned. "The Four Riders of the Apocalypse."

  "You mean...you're joining them in...doing what they do? What they did?"

  "Corey's joining us in everything. Not just dispensing justice or whatever else is entailed. Everything. After tonight we will never part ways."

  “We once tried to help by being a benevolent good," Melissa added. "That was the whole point of the camp as a refuge for the women. That was destroyed, that didn't work out so well. In the end there are few people one can genuinely trust so it's back to being a malevolent good. With only those that we can rely on, and trust."

  "And love," Desiree said.

  "That's the four of us," Corey finished, aware that he had Desiree's arm around his waist, Blaise's hand on his shoulder and his hand on Melissa's hip.

  "I'm coming with you!" Dennis blurted.

  "There can only be Four Riders, Dennis," Blaise said sombrely, even with a touch of sorrow.

  "I've got nothing and nobody," Dennis said. "You guys are the only ones who have ever made me feel like I belong, like I'm something, like I matter. And you are the only ones who matter to me. Let me come along too, I swear I'll never let you down. You'll never see anybody as loyal as Dennis King, I swear on every single grave in that cemetery down there."

  Melissa, Blaise, Desiree and Corey stared at Dennis for the longest time.

  "Even the Riders need a Watchdog don't they?" Dennis cajoled. "That'll be me."

  "Yeah I suppose they might," Blaise eventually answered for all of them. "As for your loyalty Dennis, I don't think that can be questioned. You can come with us."

  "So you want us to take you home then Lee?"

  "No," Lee spoke after an eternity's pause. "I know I made some horrible mistakes, some bad, wrong and incredibly stupid selfish decisions and I want to fix that. I'd really like to stick with Dennis if that's cool. Without you guys I've got nobody either and so much of that is my fault."

  "Your call, Corey," Melissa said simply.

  Corey knew why the baton had been passed to him, left in Melissa's hands it would be a case of Lee seeing none of them again.

  He looked at Lee for so long it seemed like the grass had grown up over his feet.

  Remembered all the stupid things Lee had done. Not just over the course of the evening, but the entire time he'd known him.

  Remembered all the good times too. How the pair of them had become friends.

  Everything they'd ever been through together, with or without the other members of their group.

  Now he and Lee were the only two left.

  "Not you Lee," he said. "We don't want you."

  Lee's crestfallen face looked like if he had any more tears to divulge he would drown in them, his mouth flapping soundlessly.

  "I'm just kidding man," Corey broke the terrible silence. "You can come too. After all, we're the only six people walking out of here. It may as well be together."

  He extended a hand to Lee, hauling him up to his feet.

  Then they walked, a tight formation with Corey and Desiree at the head, flanked by Blaise and Melissa, Dennis and Lee wandering together behind them.

  Death, destruction, disaster, carnage spread from the very dirt track they'd entered this terrible place in to the very back of the sprawling hectares of the cemetery and everywhere in between, but they were leaving it all behind.

  Many had come in, only six would be exiting.

  Down amongst the old graves where it ended, the Plebs gnawed upon the bones of the presents given to them.

  THE END