The group of men all stood at once, still finding the situation amusing at first, until they finally saw what Billy had just seen. All of them watched with a mixture of shock and disgust as David walked hand in hand along the beach with Ashley, a black man, heading in the opposite direction and away from them.
Some of the thugs began spitting in disgust and playfully ramming their fingers down their throats, feigning the motion of vomiting. Eric remained calm and collected, though, as he continued watching the gay couple stroll along the beach without a care in the world. He watched with even greater disgust as the couple then began playfully pushing each other, then laughing and smiling while tickling one another. Soon they were play fighting, then falling onto the sand in a bundled heap of love and joy. A few moments after that, the couple were kissing passionately on the beach.
Eric, Billy and the rest of the gang didn't have a clue which way to look as the couple continued embracing. One of them even began stomping around the truck in a furious, hate-filled rage. He looked utterly appalled that two men, especially one black and one white, would do such a thing on a public beach. Did they have no shame?
Some of the men discussed storming onto the beach and attacking the couple, putting an end to the disgusting charade at once. They even began picking up knives and baseball bats stored inside the driver's compartment of the pickup for occasions just like this. Bats and knives still fresh with the blood stains from their previous German camping targets, for occasions just like this.
Eric stopped them though before they could take any further action. With great will and determination, he managed to calm his gang down by convincing them they should go about this another way. He'd carefully studied David and Ashley on the beach, the way they both walked and carried themselves, their big, fit, muscular frames. He'd rationed a wild guess that both men could clearly handle themselves. So a more appropriate sneak attack might be in order.
The rest of the gang calmed down soon enough and continued watching the couple as they now made their way to the far end of the beach. From behind a huge rock, David and Ashley led out two horses that had been tied there. They mounted the tamed beasts and rode them up an old dirt track that wound all the way up and away from the beach, towards the next set of hills.
Eric and Billy jumped into the front seats of the truck. The three other men jumped into the back, still anxiously chatting and posturing amongst themselves about what they were going to do to the two sick fags once they got them alone.
Eric started the engine and reversed away from the beach. A few minutes later, they were tailing David and Ashley as they trotted along the old dirt road and up towards the approaching hill and cliffs. Eric and his gang kept their distance. They knew the general direction the two men were heading with their horses, so they continued playing the waiting game.
They followed the two men for another hour before watching them ride their horses through the gates of a secluded cottage located on the top of the cliffs. Eric parked the truck off road, a few hundred yards from the cottage and behind a set of thick trees. He told the rest of the men to wait in the truck while he snuck up to the cliffs, through the surrounding woods, so he could take a better look.
With a few grumbles, they did as he asked. Eric made his way through the forest, eventually coming out at a rickety old wooden fence that surrounded the perimeter of the holiday let. He noticed the two horses, both tied up and drinking from a large bucket of water beside the oak tree a few dozen yards from the cliff edge. He waited patiently in the bushes behind the fence for another 20 minutes before David emerged from the cottage. He was carrying a crossbow and a shotgun along with a huge, empty rucksack on his back. Definitely on his way out; hunting would be the obvious guess. For a second, Eric thought that David might take one of the horses with him, but he didn't. He left the cottage grounds, walking back along the old dirt road that led down to the other side of the steep cliffs.
At a cautious distance, Eric followed him until David cut across an open field, seemingly heading towards a distant forest there. Eric made another guess that the huge, athletic white man wouldn't be back any time soon, thus leaving his black male lover all alone and easy pickings.
Eric hurried back to the off-road dirt track where he'd left his truck along with the rest of his impatiently waiting gang. When he arrived, he explained what he'd seen. David had gone hunting, which meant he'd left the gay black man home alone. They'd have ample time to have their fun and then some.
Eric jumped back into the truck and started the engine. He reversed onto the main road and drove, full speed ahead, straight for the cottage. He smashed through the old wooden gates, startling the horses and scaring some birds from the surrounding trees. The five men jumped down and out of the pickup, grabbing their bats and knives as they did. In no time, they had barged their way inside the cottage, trashing and smashing the place to pieces like a bunch of football hooligans let loose on the unsecured home of their arch-rivals.
Soon, the men were dragging a naked, bruised and battered Ashley out from the cottage and onto the grass. All of them took turns kicking, punching and beating the man to a pulp with their bats, knives and fists. Eric then made his way back to the truck and pulled out a long, thick rope from the rear. He rejoined the gang and wrapped the rope tightly around the barely alive Ashley's throat. Each man then took hold of an arm and a leg, picked Ashley up of the ground, and carried his naked body towards the oak tree.
The horses were going crazy now, neighing furiously while jumping up and down and running around wildly, as far as their ropes would allow.
Once underneath the oak tree, Eric threw the rope over a high, thick branch. With Billy's help, he hauled Ashley up into the air by his neck. This action suddenly got the adrenaline pumping through Ashley's veins again. Furiously, he began kicking and clawing out, struggling hard and using his free hands to clutch and swipe at the tight rope around his throat. But there was nothing he could do. His struggles only delayed the inevitable.
After the men helped tie the end of the rope to the tree trunk, Eric jogged back over to the pickup truck and grabbed a canister of petrol. The other men then turned their attention towards the unsettled horses. They surrounded the first one, taunting and sneering at the fearful beast. Finally, they all charged at the horse in unison, stabbing, beating and battering the poor creature to a cold and brutal death.
Eric made his way back to the hanging Ashley, who was still struggling with the rope while gasping desperately for the last ounce of life within.
With a smug, hideous grin, Eric began pouring the petrol all over Ashley's lower body. Ashley tried one last time to beg and plead for his life. Eric was hearing none of it. The black man's protests, groans and cries just made Eric even more determined to see his sick, twisted act through to its brutal end. When he stopped to think about it, these were the moments he enjoyed most of all while hunting, torturing and slaying these foreign, immigrant scum, who had absolutely no place in his world or this new country of his. To Eric, they were foul creatures less than human, less than cockroaches or the scum that gathered at the bottom of a dirty sink. Hearing them beg and plead for their lives while knowing it would all be over for them in the next few moments made the whole thing worthwhile for him. He was well and truly addicted to this hunting and torture thrill, like so many of his friends and fellow true Brits, and there would never, ever be any turning back from it.
Eric pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit it. With one last sinister grin, he chucked the lighter at Ashley's bare feet, setting them and the rest of his body instantly ablaze. The other four men, who were all beating and stabbing at the second horse now, stopped what they were doing. Laughing and jeering, they circled the human fireball. The burning man's cries inside the flames finally died down to an eerie crackle and a series of crisp pops while his body gently swayed in the wind.
Once Ashley had stopped moving, the gang returned to the two dead horses, hauled them up one at a time
and loaded them into the back of the pickup, all the while joking with each other about how much horsemeat they had to sustain themselves for the rest of the year.
***
Back in the present, Eric kept his eyes firmly away from David's, and especially away from the picture still being shoved in front of his face. He knew exactly who David was, this tall, athletic, ragged and rough-looking man. But for the life left in him, he could not bring himself to look him fully in the eye – not until David grabbed him by the cheeks and forced him to gaze at the picture again.
“Ashley was my life,” David grunted through gritted teeth while tears gathered in his eyes and streamed down the length of his cheeks. “He was my heart ... my soul ... and you fucking ripped that from me like it was nothing ... NOTHING!”
“I'm sorry,” Eric sobbed, still unable to look David in the eye even though he was being forced to do so. “Am so, so sorry.” He continued to sob. He knew he was a dead man. He'd been in David's position so many times himself, with his victims on their knees and at his mercy. He knew for sure the end was near. Yet he still had hope that David would take mercy on him, perhaps even feel sorry for him and take pity on him if he continued to sob and cry and beg and plead for his life.
“I never thought for one second that someone who could commit such acts could ever feel any kind of remorse,” David continued, just above a whisper, desperately trying to keep his anger under control and from exploding right in Eric's face.
“I'm sorry,” Eric continued to sob. “I just ... we just got caught up ... in the whole uprising whirlwind ... caught up in the whole mob mentality ... I'm sorry.”
Eric tried to wipe his tears, but the strength in his arms had deserted him.
“I'm sorry,” he continued babbling.
David roared up to the high heavens before swinging wildly for Eric's face. He began punching him over and over, pounding his face, his nose, his mouth, his jaw with a violent, uncontrollable rage until Eric collapsed to the floor in a bloodied heap of pulp, barely conscious, barely alive. Consumed by hate and revenge, David climbed on top of him. He clutched Eric's face with his two huge hands and slowly began shoving his thumbs deep inside Eric's eyes. David roared again as he pushed harder, puncturing his thumbs deeper inside Eric's skull. The sheer agony of the act brought Eric kicking and screaming back to consciousness. When David felt like he couldn't push any farther, he slid his thumbs back out from the two red, puddled holes.
David stood back up onto his feet again while Eric wriggled in the dirt, clutching his face and eyes in sheer agony. David took a moment to turn away from the screaming man, now rolling around in pain beneath his feet. He glanced around at his surroundings. He was looking for something ... something in particular. Something fitting that he could use to finish the job and put this man out of his misery once and for all.
When his eyes fell upon the overturned pickup truck, the something he'd been searching for immediately caught his eye. David limped over towards the upturned truck, leaving Eric to roll around in his own pit of foul misery and despair. He picked up a small petrol can which seemed to be half full of fuel, lying at the back end of the truck.
From inside the cargo bed, David then grabbed a hold of one of the last remaining spare tyres. With the tyre in one hand and the petrol can in the other, he hobbled back over towards the still-howling Eric, who was now somehow up on his knees, desperately trying to feel his way around the rough terrain without the aid of his eyes.
David flicked open the petrol can and poured the liquid all over Eric, every single drop. Eric sobbed and pleaded as he tried to slap and swat the petrol away, but it was useless. He was drenched in the stuff. David then dragged the pitiful and beaten Eric back to his feet before throwing the thick tyre over his head and shoving it hard, right over his shoulders so that it sat halfway down his arms and firmly around his upper stomach, like a life-saving water ring.
He then pulled out his engraved silver lighter and lit it. He threw it at Eric's chest, where it landed on top of the thick tyre. Eric's petrol-soaked body went up in flames in microseconds. He howled and screamed in pure and utter terror before trying to escape, anywhere and everywhere. Soon he stumbled to the ground as the brutal flames engulfed his upper body at a furious rate, melting the tyre into his skin.
As Eric lay burning, screeching and squirming on the dirt, his flesh and skin bubbling and melting, David stepped around his burning carcass and booted the flaming tyre around his midsection with a swift, hard kick. The blow sent Eric rolling and tumbling down the steep drop in front of him.
As the flaming and screeching body of Eric rolled and bounced all the way to down the bottom of the valley, David hobbled over to the edge of the steep drop and watched him fall and burn in silence, until Eric's agonising screams and cries of pain died out altogether.
For a short time thereafter, David stood and watched the rest of Eric's burning body smoke and smoulder at the bottom of the valley. Utterly exhausted, he suddenly fell to his knees as if all his remaining energy had suddenly evaporated from his body, out into the thin air. He continued staring down at the valley, long and hard, as more thoughts and images of him and Ashley together again flashed through his mind at a rapid rate.
David remembered marching with his army squadron through a parade of numerous battalions of army soldiers. He remembered seeing Ashley for the very first time as he marched past him with his own squadron. They both smiled warmly at one another, then continued marching through the parade.
He remembered walking around the army base with Ashley, laughing and talking, joking and making friends. He remembered eating in the same army mess hall as Ashley, sitting amongst his other squadron mates, sharing warm smiles and longing glances with each other from opposite ends of the hall. Nobody seemed to pay any particular attention to their harmless actions.
In another memory, they were both wearing civilian clothes and taking a drive up north, into the majestic Scottish Highlands. On their way through the scenic roads, they took some time to stop at a secluded loch to share lunch before walking around an old gothic castle, innocently touching hands whenever anyone wasn't around or looking. Always smiling. Always happy.
Later, they parked at their beautiful, isolated holiday cottage before venturing down to the picturesque stretch of secluded beach that would one day be their downfall. After going for a refreshing swim and lounging on the sandy beach for hours, they walked back to the rented cottage, way up high on the cliffs.
Later that evening and with both men now wearing playful kilts, they made a barbeque on the grass while drinking bottles of cold beer and watching the sun go down. When midnight came, they were back inside the cottage again, but now lying in bed, kissing, caressing and making love for the very first time.
A few weeks later, they were back on their army base and working hard. When they weren't training with the army or away on exercise drills, they spent their spare time together, travelling with each other, even exercising together.
A few months into their relationship, one that both men had tried desperately to keep secret in an army of predominantly heterosexual beings, things had spilled out of control in the mess hall one afternoon. The budding tension related to immigrants and racial issues filled the air. Some of the more narrow-minded soldiers had cottoned on to what was going on between David and Ashley, growing more suspicious by the day.
A group of soldiers, perhaps half a dozen or so, who fancied their chances in a scuffle with David and Ashley, approached them while they sat at a table together, eating lunch. The men circled them. They sneered at them and made snide remarks along with disgusting homophobic insults. One of the soldiers even spat in Ashley's face. In David, that act unleashed years of pent-up anger, fear and rage that had been bottled up deep inside after so many years of hiding his sexuality from friends, family and the army.
David went nuts, breakdown mental in fact, and hurled himself into the lot of them, taking all of them on and fighting t
hem at once. Ashley tried to pull David away as he beat two of the men to a bleeding pulp while throwing the others across tables and chairs like some raging bull. A demon unleashed from the gates of hell. Soon more soldiers came running, 10 more in fact, and with great effort they managed to pin the snarling David to the ground. No one there that day had ever seen anything quite like it.
David remembered being reprimanded by his superior officers soon after. He was swiftly arrested and court-martialled for his violent behaviour. After his court-martial, David was led away in handcuffs to the army jail. At the same time, some disturbing events were unfolding outside and around the army base as the out-of-control riots and protests from the extreme nationalists, who had been growing in numbers by the weeks and months, became staggeringly out of hand.
There were loud explosions from the nearby town, followed by huge fires and heavy smoke. Gunfire echoed out as thousands of white British extremists tried to force their way inside the army base after sacking the town.
In no time, they were inside the camp, causing havoc and running amok. More fires and explosions broke out. Smoke filled the air. Some of the white soldiers quickly showed their true loyalties and seemed more than happy to stand back and let the extremists go about their craziness, killing, shooting, stabbing and rounding up any non-white soldiers or any soldiers who tried to fight back.
As David watched the chaotic situation unfold from his cell window, he knew the race hate war that had been threatening to explode after months and years of built-up tensions between the white nationalist Brits and the foreign immigrants had finally kicked off. As the army base fell to pieces, David remembered Ashley coming to his aid. After beating up the only two guards left inside the army jailhouse, Ashley helped David free himself from his cell and handcuffs.
The Wrath of David Page 22