The Wrath of David

by Sean-Paul Thomas

  David pulled over at every street sign that caught his eye, desperately seeking the one street that would bring his journey to a redemptive end. A street name John had given him over the phone, back in the garage and farmland he and Louise had helped liberate. Where were those liberated men and women now? Still at the farm? On the run? Living in the woods and wild? Had they managed to find or steal a boat and flee the mainland? Or had they all been caught, beaten and enslaved once more? Or shot dead when they ran?

  Finally, David pulled into the junction of a street in one of the last and northernmost suburbs of Fort William. Its name was Thistle Park and the sight of it almost made David stumble from his bike. He glanced along the length of the short little upmarket lane. He gazed at the rows of huge white houses and their immaculate front gardens. Then his eyes came to rest upon house number five at the far back end.

  There weren't too many vehicles parked around the beautiful little cul-de-sac, but David's heart sank to the pit of his stomach when he recognised the black pickup truck he'd been waiting to see all this time. It was parked on the driveway of number five like it had been sitting there waiting for him this whole entire time.

  For a long while, David sat on his bike staring over at the black pickup. Time had completely stopped and now he felt like he was waiting for something to happen, anything at all, to jolt him back to reality. He knew he should walk on over there immediately, knock on the door or even break it down, for that matter, and put an end to his pain, turmoil and suffering. However, for some damn reason he couldn't explain, he felt absolutely compelled to just sit there and wait.

  In those surreal and time-stopping moments, it just felt like the natural thing to do. Perhaps it was the shock of having found the truck so easily, after such a tenacious and perilous journey to get there. David had imagined himself scouring the length and breadth of the country to find the damn thing, but there it sat, in all its faded glory, waiting for him in the first place he'd come to.

  Out of nowhere, a grey BMW drove past David and into the quiet street. It pulled up outside number five and instantly brought David back to reality with a thunderous jolt. A white British family consisting of a man, a woman, and three children exited the car. They were carrying boxes and tubs of wrapped-up food and bottles of drink, possibly for some kind of barbeque that was about to begin or had already started. The happy little family made its way to the side of the house.

  When they disappeared into the out-of-sight back garden, David gathered himself. He let out a weary sigh, a breath he'd been holding in even since he'd laid eyes upon the black pickup. Finally, he switched off the bike's engine and climbed off his seat. Calmly, he approached the house.

  The closer he ventured to the front of the property the more he could hear light pop and rock music blaring out from the garden at the back. The music was slightly drowned out by banter, chat and laughter, so definitely some kind of garden party was happening back there. David pushed open the side gate and slowly walked along the alley separating the large house from the next. He emerged into a beautiful, spacious back garden with an array of flower beds and borders.

  The music played louder now, blaring outwards and upwards from an old iPod that sat on a small table just outside the main house’s open veranda doors. However, it wasn’t so loud that it would interrupt the flow of energetic conversation coming from the large group of men and women who littered the place. In total, David counted eight men, seven women and 10 children, all of them of various ages, but only one colour – white. Not one of the adults looked older than 40.

  Most of them were talking or laughing amongst themselves, while two of the men cooked meat upon a large barbeque at the back of the garden. Two female slaves wearing hand me down dresses also served drinks around the garden to the various guests. They just moved around with blank emotionless expressions on their faces before heading back inside the house again with rubbish and empty glasses just as soon as there trays were empty.

  Nobody seemed to notice David though as he stood there, staring coldly over the entire group, eying them all, men, women and children, one by one, seeing who might be familiar to him and wasn't. As he studied their features, he remembered the brutal video footage he'd seen back on Norman's farm on the Isle of Man. Video footage from the cottage he and Ashley had rented on a few occasions in the Highlands last summer.

  He remembered watching the five men smashing down the cottage gates with their black pickup truck. They were all faces and figures he'd never forget. He remembered the group of men jumping out of the truck and breaking into the main cottage, kicking down doors, smashing in windows, tearing the whole place apart.

  As David casually eyed each person up, he had recognised at least four of the culprits involved out of the eight or so men who sat and stood around the garden. Yes, he could put a face to four of the fuckers, but he didn't give a damn if the remaining men were innocent or not. To him, they were guilty by association and would die at his hands today, or else he would certainly die trying. Women and children too, if they so happened to get in his way. They would all fall at his feet, so help him God. In his eyes, the fact that they were hanging out and being friendly with the scum he remembered from that video footage made them all guilty enough to receive his death sentence.

  Then David’s eyes fell upon him. The undistinguishable man with the dark blue hair. The huge, muscle-bound, tattooed freak leader.

  He sat on a deck chair next to the barbeque, against the opposite side fence and halfway along the garden. He had been blocked from David's view by one of the other big men, who'd been standing and flipping sausages and burgers. However, as soon as the burger-flipping maestro stepped forward and began putting the cooked burgers into the waiting empty rolls, David knew for sure he was in the right place. In that moment, a huge emotional weight finally lifted from his shoulders.

  The leader’s hair was a little longer now. His skin a bit more tanned. His face and body were also a little more filled out, but it was him, all right. No doubt about that. Two little kids sat on his lap, both giggling away as he bounced them up and down upon his muscled, tattooed thighs.

  David's observations swiftly came to an end when one of the women of the group finally glanced over towards him, letting out a startled gasp. Then another woman, followed by one of the men, whipped around to face David in the hidden front corner of the garden. They all looked startled by the presence of the eerie stranger lurking inside their cosy, happy space.

  Yes, he looked white British and could easily have passed as someone they might have known at some point in their past, but he was still an uninvited guest, and a rough looking one at that, no matter the colour of his skin. It was the hollow look in his eyes, though, that made everyone feel so damn uncomfortable and nervy just gazing at him.

  He had the look of death. The look of endless pain and suffering. The look of someone who didn't give a shit about anyone or anything. That was what gave away the strange man's true intentions and let the others instantly know he wasn't there on friendly terms. Something very bad was about to go down.

  There were more gasps of shock and muttered whispers as everyone else now focussed their attention upon the cold-looking figure of David.

  Only one person had yet to lay eyes upon him.

  After a slight hesitation, the blue-haired man finally caught his eye and stood. After carefully studying David up and down, he swaggered pretentiously towards him before coming to a halt in the middle of the garden, about a dozen yards away. He'd already set down one of his children after he'd climbed to his feet, but he was still carrying a young girl in his arms. He tried to stare down David with his meanest, and most intimidating “hard man” act.

  Nobody had addressed David yet, or even asked who the hell he might be. One of the women then called desperately over to the blue-haired man. “Eric. Who is that man? Do you know him?”

  “Nut. Never seen this clown before in ma puff,” the blue-haired Eric bellowed. “What the
hell are you daen in my garden, pal? This is ma house. Ma fuckin street,” Eric roared at David with a vicious sneer. “Do you even know who the fuck I am, pal?”

  David said nothing. He just stared into Eric's eyes with his own cold, hollow intensity. It was a stare that tore right into the man's soul, if he had one. David neither blinked nor took his eyes away from Eric the whole time.

  "Are you fucking lost or something pal?" Eric continued.

  David suddenly remembered more of the video footage. He remembered that cruel bastard Eric dragging a barely conscious Ashley from the cottage. He remembered watching this man in front of him laughing and joking about how disgusting Ashley was to him, to all of them. Then they had all joined in with laughing hideously at Ashley's expense. Next they began stomping on Ashley's struggling brown, naked body, again and again, over and over, until Ashley finally lay still, crumpled, bloodied, broken, but not quite gone from the world. All of them had then taken a hold of some part of Ashley's body and carried it over to the oak tree by the edge of the cliff. They strung up Ashley's body by the neck before dousing it in petrol and setting it on fire.

  David slowly withdrew the handgun tucked into the back of his trouser belt. Eric took a few steps back, caught off guard by the sudden reveal of a gun. The last thing on his mind was that this little standoff should turn into some raging, bloodied gunfight right in the middle of his backyard. Eric raised his right hand in surrender while still holding the little girl with his other hand.

  “Wait there, pal. Wait there one fucking minute, okay, pal,” Eric protested. “What the fuck do you want here, man? What the fuck.”

  Without hesitation, David shot Eric in the thigh. Eric fell to the ground, clutching his leg and howling in pain. He dropped the hysterical, screaming kid to the floor with a thud. Everyone else gasped and then screamed as they desperately tried to take cover somewhere, anywhere, all at once.

  “I'm leaving you ‘til last,” David muttered down at Eric as a large dog began barking wildly from somewhere close by.

  David quickly scanned the garden for the remaining men. The ones he remembered. He thought he recognised one and shot him in the head. If he had nothing to do with it, then fuck him, David thought. That was what he deserved for hanging around with scum.

  The remaining adults and children began screaming and yelling with more intensity and fear, the children even worse as they were grabbed and manhandled by their parents before being huddled into the safety of the house in one huge mass of panic.

  “Where are your guns?” a third man roared at anyone and everyone. “Does nobody have any fucking guns?”

  David shot the man twice in the back. He still wasn't dead, though, and squirmed around on the ground, wheezing for breath.

  “I have a gun,” David said as he approached and stood over the dying man, who turned around painfully to face David. All he saw was the devil with glazing eyes looking back.

  “Why?” the man wheezed, spitting blood. “Why?”

  David stepped on his chest before shooting the man through the throat, just like he'd done to the Nazi scum whose bike he'd taken. Then he shot him again through the jaw, splitting the man's lower face in two.

  David glanced around for the other remaining men. Right away, one of them dove straight for him, right out of nowhere. He ploughed David into the wooden side fence, through which both men crashed before falling into the next-door neighbour’s garden.

  A huge beast of a Rottweiler barked insanely at all the commotion next door, but when the two men exploded through the fence and into his yard, the beast dog immediately attacked them, showing no preference for who was in the right and who was in the wrong.

  A fourth man ran to Eric's aid. Eric was still howling and rolling in agony on the grass, clutching his wounded leg as the blood seeped out. The short man wearing a goatee helped haul Eric back onto his feet.

  “We need to get the fuck out of here, Eric, and we need to get out of here now,” the short man cried. “Where are all your fucking guns?”

  “In the fucking truck, you cunt,” Eric roared back, trying to hobble and balance at the same time. The short man ushered Eric towards the narrow ally at the side of the garden. When they finally reached it, they both took a quick, fleeting glance at David to see where the hell he was and what had become of him.

  David, still wrestling both dog and man, finally managed to grab his fallen gun from underneath the fence. He knew he had just one bullet left and he shot the dog straight through the skull just as its jaws locked down on his left arm, tearing away his flesh and skin.

  David then turned back to the man who had rugby tackled him through the fence. He sat astride him, his knees pinning the large man's huge shoulders to the grass. David smashed in the man's face with the handle of his empty gun. He roared like a lion as he pounded the man's face to an unrecognisable, bloody pulp. He didn't stop until he could see the man's brains splattering out from the top of his crushed skull.

  Gathering his rage, David whipped his head around to the garden behind him. The yard was clear of people. Totally evacuated. David jumped back onto his feet and crossed the broken fence, hurrying over towards the side of the house, where he guessed Eric had hobbled away too.

  Suddenly, one of the women still hiding on the veranda began shooting intermittently at David with a handgun. She had ducked low behind the small table at the back door where the iPod was still blaring out music. One of the bullets slammed into David's right arm. He roared in pain as he turned back to face the raging woman. She tried to shoot him again, but David threw his empty handgun straight at her head.

  The woman ducked but the gun smacked the side of her face, cutting her ear in two. In a blind fury, the woman raged to her feet and prepared to unload the rest of the cartridge from her gun in David’s general direction. Instead, she felt the hard, brute force of David's hunting knife slamming itself deep and hard into her chest. He'd thrown it straight at her from almost 15 yards away, striking the middle of her breast plate like she was some bull’s-eye target board.

  David hurried towards the woman. She'd fallen onto her knees, then onto her back, stone-cold dead. David took his knife, ripping it out of her chest in one smooth motion. He picked up her fallen handgun and continued towards the side of the house.

  As he launched down the side alley, he caught a glimpse of the pickup truck reversing and screeching out of the driveway. Inside, from the passenger seat, a panicking Eric began shooting wildly at David with a shotgun. David dove behind a row of overflowing bins before steadying himself onto his knees. He began shooting right back at them with his newly acquired handgun, but only three bullets were left in the chamber. Two of them slammed into the side of the pickup, doing no damage whatsoever as the short man with the goatee sped the vehicle away, while the blue-haired Eric grinned back at him like some smug Cheshire cat.

  David was back on his feet in no time. He sprinted like the athlete he was straight for the street corner and his waiting bike, even running past women and children fleeing from the barbeque. The women screamed and took cover, diving into nearby bushes with their panicking children. They cowered as David hurried by, giving none of them the time of day as he jumped straight onto his bike, started the engine, pumped the pedal and tore away like a bat out of hell, straight after the pick up.

  Chapter 27

  The pickup truck raced through the back streets of Fort William before tearing out onto the main through-road that took it northbound, out of town and up towards the next series of never-ending mountains in the distance. Behind it, David rode his bike furiously, hot on the truck's tail, but wisely keeping his distance a few dozen yards behind.

  Inside the truck, the short man with the goatee looked like a nervous wreck as he concentrated with all his will and determination on the empty, winding road ahead. In the passenger seat, the injured Eric carefully loaded his empty shotgun with more cartridges.

  “Who was that? Who the fuck was it?” raged the short, b
earded driver.

  “I have no fucking idea, Billy,” said a calmer and more composed Eric.

  “Well, he sure the fuck knows us. What the hell did he mean, he was saving you for fucking last?”

  “I told you already, Billy. I dinnie fuckin ken. I've never seen that cunt before in ma life,” Eric replied, getting more and more agitated.

  They continued driving north, leaving Fort William well and truly in their wake. They screeched and swayed all over the Highland road as they took every tight bend and narrow corner faster and harder than the last. Like a leech, David kept riding them hard, always right behind like a heat-seeking missile and a man possessed. The only way to make him stop would be for the men to somehow end his life for good. They knew that now, more than they knew that the sky was blue and the grass was green. They were never going to shake him off unless they ended him.

  “Can you drive?” cried Billy.

  “I think so,” Eric replied, wincing as he tried to raise his wounded leg a few inches.

  “Swap seats with me, then,” demanded Billy.

  It was awkward and annoying as hell, but Eric and Billy managed to clumsily swap seats without veering off the road. Billy took the shotgun Eric had just loaded and crawled through the rear compartment window, into the exposed cargo bed of the pickup truck. The back end was filled with boxes, old tyres and other useless bits of car junk.

  Billy kneeled behind one of the larger boxes and took careful aim with his shotgun, straight for David's head. He fired his first shot. David, who had been watching Billy's movements the whole entire time, swerved immediately, dodging the gunfire with ease. He slowed his acceleration a touch, backing off a few more yards. Better safe than sorry.

  Billy took another shot and missed David by inches this time, the bullets whizzing by his right shoulder and arm before he backed away even farther.