The Wrath of David

by Sean-Paul Thomas

  “I didn't ask for your input,” David said, hovering over the woman. He then crouched down to one of the nearest dead bodies and began unbuckling the man's belt. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  The woman just glared up at him before spitting a mouthful of blood and saliva onto the ground. She didn't say another word. Louise looked a little taken back that David would so calmly and casually strike a woman like that. Then she quickly realised that being on the side of the racists lost you the moral right to play the gender card.

  David crouched down and tied the woman's hands behind her back with one of the belts he'd just stripped from the first dead body. He bound her ankles tightly with another belt before dragging her towards the far wall and leaving her up against it.

  David stepped to the side window of the shop and glanced out at the surrounding fields. The other female guards were still circling the slaves in the distant field. Only occasionally did they glance over towards the garage, giving David the general impression that they weren't too interested in what their missing guard friend was up to just yet.

  Louise approached him and stood by his side. She continued clutching the Uzi in her hand, letting it dangle against her thigh.

  “So now what?” Louise finally asked, breaking the tension.

  David frowned and shook his head, seemingly a little irritated.

  “I didn't mean it like that. I just meant, so now what do we do?”

  “Take a look around, Louise. I don't have a fucking plan. I'm just winging it here. This was your brilliant idea, remember?”

  “Well, I'm sorry. I just never realised it was gonna be so ... so bloody messy.”

  David turned back to the tied-up woman on the other side of the store. She was still staring up at him, giving him the evil eye, like she wasn't so scared of him in the slightest. David thought that was brave of her, considering the circumstances of her being tied up and at his mercy, and then with the dead, mutilated bodies of her friends lying all around, serving as a constant reminder that the odds of her getting out of this predicament alive were not in her favour in the slightest.

  Then David thought about the scared refugees in the forest and the hard-working slaves out in the fields beside the garage. He soon changed his perception of her from brave and resilient to stupid and arrogant.

  “How many more of you are in that cottage over there? Tell me and you have my word I'll spare your pathetic little life when this is all over.”

  The woman hesitated as if considering David's offer. All the time she neither blinked nor took her eyes away from him. “I'd say about three,” she finally answered.

  “Good girl. And when do you bring in the people from the fields?”

  “You mean the slaves,” the woman said with a sinister tone. “Late, my dear,” she continued. “Very, very late.”

  “What about feeding time?”

  “First thing in the morning. Last thing at night.”

  “And you guys stay out there with them the whole entire time?”

  “Sometimes. Not always three of us. Sometimes just one or two, sweetheart. Depends what other things we have going on.”

  “And three other guys are in that far cottage over there? Inside your makeshift fucking brothel?”

  “Aye. That's right.”

  David turned back to the side window before turning to Louise. “I'm gonna take a little walk over there.”

  “Right now?” Louise asked, sounding a little nervy and panicked. She had no wish to go with David, but she didn't want to be left on her own in the garage, either. Then she thought about all the slaves working in the field and knew she had to go along with whatever plan David had in mind. She had started this mini-revolution in the first place. With that in mind, she stood a little taller.

  “Right now,” David continued, “I'm just gonna walk on over there and see what happens. It's better than them coming over to us. Plus, we need to act first, before anymore of these fuckers cotton on to what's happening here.”

  “And what about the other guards in the fields with the machine guns?” Louise asked.

  “As long as they see some kind of movement from here and soon, I'm pretty sure they'll stay put for now. You stay here, though. If anything happens, if anyone tries to come in through that front door, anyone except me, you shoot them Louise, you hear? You point that gun at their fucking chests. You pull that trigger and you shoot them away to fuck.”

  Louise gulped, then nodded, indicating she clearly understood his brutal words. David then motioned for Louise to hand him the Uzi. She did as he asked. He inspected it like he knew every square inch of the weapon. He flicked a tiny switch with his thumb on the side of the gun, then handed it back to her.

  “Safety's off. You're all good to go.”

  Louise took the gun and glanced over David's shoulder, back outside the window again and over towards the far cottage. Suddenly she saw a young bearded man exit the front door. He was still tucking in his shirt as he made his way over towards the garage.

  “David, look,” said an anxious Louise. “Someone's coming.”

  David turned around in a heartbeat and took a glance. “I need to go now,”

  David made his way towards the woman. He pulled her roughly to her feet by the roots of her hair before dragging her to the window. He pointed over to the bearded man.

  “What's his name?” David insisted, raising his tone.

  “That's Rossco,” the woman replied. She was about to add another few words to that sentence when David threw her hard, back down onto the floor. She quickly shuffled back up against the far wall.

  “If she's lying, spray her with bullets,” David said to Louise.

  “How will I know if she's lying if you're out there?” Louise asked, trying to sound calm and composed. However, her palms and forehead were damp with sweat so blatantly gave her away.

  “Just listen for the gunfire,”

  “Oh ... okay,” Louise replied, a little confused and still unsure.

  As David made his way to the door, Louise glanced down at the tied-up woman again. She licked her lips and gave Louise a sly wink. Louise shook her head in disgust and turned away from her.

  When David reached the exit door, he turned back around to face Louise. “Remember. Anyone else comes in here, you shoot them, Louise. No questions asked. Just shoot them and ask your questions later. Do you understand?”

  Louise nodded slow and hard. “Yeah, I understand.”

  David then left the store.

  Chapter 19

  David casually made his way across the rough, grassy field that led to the closest of three farm cottages. The field had a worn dirt footpath across its centre, upon which David was now walking as he moved towards the approaching Rossco.

  A curious stare spread over Rossco's face as he watched the large and intimidating figure of David coming towards him. He was about to place his hand upon the handle of his own gun strapped to his waist when David’s friendly smile made him think twice and relax a little.

  As David came to within a few dozen metres of the young bearded man, he gave him a friendly wave. “Hey. How's it going? Rossco is it?”

  “Hey pal. Aye. No bad. You new around here or something? Never seen you before.”

  “Yeah. Just chatting away with Franko in the store back there. Doing some business and trade with a couple of new slaves I've been rounding up along the coast.”

  At the mention of new slaves, Rossco's eyes almost popped out of their sockets. “Oh, you brought some new slaves. Nice one. You find any tasty lassies on your travels?”

  “Afraid not, my friend. Just a few men and young boys.”

  Rossco shook his head with grave disappointment.

  “You know how hard it is to find new female slaves around these parts,” David continued.

  “You got that right, pal. Absolute fucking nightmare,” Rossco replied with a weary sigh.

  “Anyway, Franko said that if I catch Rossco over here, he can show me the
knocking shop. Let me have a cheeky little ride or two for my business today.”

  Rossco gave out a sly little chuckle. “Oh, he did now, did he? Paying you in the pleasures of the flesh, is he?”

  “Something like that,” David said, forcing a smile right back at him.

  Rossco threw his arm around David's shoulder like they were old friends and edged him in the direction of the nearest cottage. “Sure, that's no bother, pal. Let me introduce you to our tasty flock and you can start that tab of yours ASAP.”

  Rossco led David up to the front door of the cottage. By then, his arm was already away from David's shoulder and back against his side. David took a deep breath. He wasn't sure what the hell he was going to find inside, but he braced himself for the worst. If foreign women had been getting used and sexually abused here ever since the start of the war, there was no telling what physical and mental condition they were all going to be in.

  Back inside the garage store, Louise breathed a huge sigh of relief upon seeing David and the bearded man, smiling and walking side by side like old school friends. It meant she didn't have to think about using her gun and murdering a human being for the very first time in her life … well, at least for a little while.

  “What the hell are you doing here, little Paki?” sneered the woman with a venomous tone, completely out of nowhere and shattering the tranquil peace and quiet that Louise had been working so hard to maintain.

  Louise closed her eyes before letting out another weary sigh. She turned around, painfully slow, to face the woman.

  “I couldn't even point to Pakistan on a map, you ignorant, racist bitch,” Louise retorted. “And I'm Scottish, by the way, for your information.”

  The woman snorted at that like Louise had just claimed to have some kind of magical powers.

  “Aye,” she shot back. “You just keep telling yourself that, Paki.”

  Louise let out another frustrated sigh. Her instincts told her to turn around and ignore the ignorant woman and do her utmost to not fuel her hatred. She was about to do just that when her own anger swiftly erupted and got the better of her.

  “You know what? What the hell is wrong with you, huh? I'm a human fucking being for Christ’s sake. Just like you.”

  “You're nothing like me,” the woman hissed and spat with pure and utter bile. Her tone chilled Louise to the bone. She felt a little scared and taken back, even though the woman was securely tied up and couldn't physically harm her. “You're a fucking cockroach. Pure and utter scum. A runt from some inbred Paki Muslim litter. Come over here. Take our jobs, our homes, our benefits. If you had all just gone back to your own countries like we asked you to do before the war broke out, things might have been different for your kind. But no ... most of you filthy, putrid fuckers had to stay and chance your luck.”

  Louise couldn't believe the rancid bile this crazy, ignorant and deluded woman was now sprouting. It left her almost speechless.

  “This is my home, you ignorant, racist bitch,” Louise cried right back at her. “Where else am I gonna go, huh? Why don't you go the fuck home? I mean, if you're gonna play the DNA game, I'm sure if we took a far enough look back into your messed-up, miserable family tree, we'd soon see a few big, bloody surprises. Perhaps a couple of Roman centurions gangbanging your great-great Viking slash whore Gaul of a grandmother.”

  The woman just laughed and shrugged off Louise's words before shaking her head in denial.

  “World is changing thick and fast and very much for the better now, sweetheart,” the woman continued. “Your kind isn’t welcome here in my land anymore.”

  “If this is what your land has to offer, raising a country full of fear and hate towards other fellow human beings, you can keep your shitey wee narrow-minded land.”

  ***

  Back at the cottage, Rossco led David through the front door and into the hallway. The cottage looked dull and in a great state of disrepair, as wallpaper and paint peeled from every corner of the open-planned rooms. The disgusting, rancid smell of something rotting away combined with the damp, lingering in the air.

  “The cellar's downstairs. That's where we keep all the play toys,” Rossco said with a hideous chuckle. “Not too many in great shape these days though, pal. Been holed up down there almost going on a year now, getting used and abused for most hours of the day. Which is why were on the lookout for some fresh ones, you know,” he continued with another ridiculous wink.

  David tried his best to force a grin, but with the horrible smell of death and decay infesting his lungs, it was becoming harder for him to stay in on the act that everything around the place was normal and fine and damn well hunky dory.

  “So, there are three rooms up here. Two are already occupied, as you can see,” Rossco said with another sly chuckle. “I'll show you the cellar now. Just take your pick of a toy. Grab the free room and Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt. Ride your life away. Then lock them bitches right back up again before you leave.”

  Rossco lead David towards a locked wooden door at the back of the cottage. Still grinning like the Cheshire cat, Rossco took a set of keys from a hook beside the door and unbolted a large padlock that kept the door securely sealed. He then led the way down a steep set of narrow concrete steps and into a dark, murky cellar beneath the main cottage.

  “Used to be a bomb shelter. Now it's a cell for the lassies. Helped build it myself in all,” Rossco said with the utmost pride.

  David had to cover his nose. The smells in the cellar were even more intoxicating than upstairs – a mixture of rotten flesh, damp, mould, vomit, urine and faeces.

  Once at the bottom of the stairs, Rossco reached towards the nearest brick wall and flicked on a series of dim overhead lights.

  Instantly, David came face to face with a huge open prison cell. His heart almost broke in two before sinking all the way to the bottom of his stomach. Gently, he lowered his hand from his nose and mouth and took in a deep breath. The vile smell meant nothing to him in that instance. In fact, he could no longer smell anything as his sense of sight took complete control of him.

  Inside the dark, dirty and foul cell were around eight naked and filthy women. In fact, it was hard to tell what their natural skin colour had been, they were covered so much with dirt and muck, from their messy hair to their rotten toes. All of them huddled together, sitting and lying on the cold concrete floor at the very back of the cell. Some of them sobbed and cried as the lights flickered on; some of them lay still with a look of pure and utter lifelessness upon their faces. One even appeared to be dead, or not far from it, lying against the back corner of the cell.

  David remained still, frozen in shock and horror at what he was seeing laid out bare before his eyes. He'd never seen the treatment of the ethnic minorities who had been captured during the war or left behind when the remaining government and armies had evacuated the country. Still, he'd heard stories. Like everyone else who'd escaped the horrors of the mainland, he'd heard the stories. But to see it with his very own eyes … well, it made his blood curdle and his heart tear itself into a million pieces. How could anyone treat another human being in such a cold and cruel, heartless manner? He just couldn't understand it. He couldn't fathom what went through a person’s mind to commit such an atrocious act against another human being.

  “Told you they're not in too great a shape,” Rossco chuckled. His remark sent a chill right through David's spine. “You might wanna give the one you want a good hose down out back first before you touch her. It’s up to you, pal.”

  Rossco chuckled again. David still couldn't understand it. Making jokes at other people’s misfortunes, especially when they were right in front of you. What kind of sick and twisted monsters were these people? David took another deep, hard breath, slowly but surely composing his thoughts and mind while urging himself to take swift and brutal action. An image of Rossco's twisted and contorted – yet still grinning – dead body flashed through his mind.

  Rossco moved to pat David gen
tly on the back, as if to encourage him to pick one of the girls already. But in a heartbeat, David grabbed the man by the roots of his hair and yanked his head back so hard, it made a horrific and unhealthy snapping sound. David then threw the man hard against the prison bars.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you people, huh? What the fuck is wrong with you? You sick, sick fuck,” David roared from the bottom of his gut. He pulled out his huge hunting knife and drove it deep and hard, right into Rossco's throat, splitting his neck bone and slicing out the back side. Rossco's face was a picture of horror and disbelief as he spat and gargled up blood, trying desperately to draw his last few breaths.

  David twisted the knife around, left and right, until the man stopped moving and twitching entirely. Some of the women lying on the cell floor gasped in shock as Rossco's blood dripped and splattered all over the front of their cell. David withdrew his knife from Rossco's throat before throwing his lifeless body onto the ground. Without acknowledging the women, David turned around and hurried back up the cellar steps towards the ground floor of the murky old cottage.

  In a rage, David rushed towards the nearest closed bedroom door and smashed it open with his foot. Immediately, he saw a fat naked white man heaving and humping away on top of a tied-up Asian-looking girl, who seemed to be more dead than alive. Her face was bland, ghostly pale, emotionless.

  The fat white man turned his neck to see what the loud intrusion had been, yet continued pounding away on the poor girl, like it wasn't the first time someone had burst in on him during the act of rape. Upon seeing the raging David lunging towards him and not recognising him in the slightest, the fat man tried to cry out in protest, but David had already begun dragging him by the scruff of his neck and up onto his feet.

  The fat man tried to grab a hold of David's hand, the one with such a tight grip on his scalp. This left the rest of his fat, pale, naked belly exposed as David guided his other, knife-wielding hand straight into the fat man's gut. He ripped the knife upwards, towards his chest, exposing his insides like a butchered pig and spilling his guts and intestines all over the floor.