by Goforth, Jim
“Well, we took a break,” Seth defended the choice to relax in the wooded sanctuary. Not that he needed to explain himself to Dax, who already knew where the hell they’d gone, what they’d been doing. He began to feel decidedly creeped out, even more so than before. He realised he wouldn’t have been surprised if he discovered Dax was tailing them the entire time, surreptitiously shadowing their every movement. It was possible the somewhat unhinged one deliberately set out to catch them in the act of having sex, for reasons unknown to anyone but himself. It was fairly obvious to everybody who’d seen Seth and Scarlett vacate their room in the Kathaarian suite that they’d already been intimate, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise to Dax to have that fact confirmed by them doing it again. “And no, up until then we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of anyone else either. But it’s a huge place, there’s a fuckload of people.”
“Yeah. Well, fucking Undead Fleshcrave aren’t even listed as playing tonight, so what the fuck is this? Some kind of fucking joke or what?”
“They’ll be here,” Scarlett assured him quietly, a note of finality in her voice as if she was suggesting Dax just shut the hell up.
“I haven’t seen them yet,” Dax retorted, his tone confrontational. “If this is just a big fucking waste of time…”
“What are you bitching about?” Seth interjected, now both disturbed by the possibility that Dax, insanely jealous over the fact that Scarlett wanted Seth rather than reciprocating his own many attempts to wangle his way into her thong, was possibly stalking them and irritated by the guy’s efforts to get under her skin now. “You scored a whole free day of pretty reasonable death metal…for the most part…and you didn’t have to carry anything like we’ve had to. All day. I can’t see anything to be complaining about, or saying it’s a waste of time.”
“Yeah, well you wouldn’t fucking see it as a waste of time would you, Seth? You and Miss Sexy Zombie Slayer have got plenty of things to occupy your time, don’t you? Who cares about old Dax, looks like fucking Dax can’t even be trusted. See, the reason I didn’t have to carry any shit around is because none of you fuckers trust me with the goods, do you? But I’m not the one sneaking off to fuck doggystyle in the dark corners of the park while being entrusted with the guitars and shit am I? I’ll tell you one thing for fucking free, I’m not trusted, hey? Well guess what, I’m starting to think I can’t trust you, Seth. Not in the slightest.”
“That was a pretty precise reference to sexual positions,” Scarlett said. “Lucky guess, hey?”
Fuming, Dax lapsed into silence, his brow dark. He looked a fraction put off his game that neither one of them bit at his remark professing to lose any trust in Seth, and by proxy everybody else, deflecting his apparent belief that none of them trusted him enough to carry the Subversion weapons, onto them.
At this particular juncture in time Seth was glad the firearms were all safely ensconced inside the instrument cases.
One of the few rare moments he and Mark were able to speak following Seth’s spiral into self-imposed silence and comfort in nothing but the bottle was this morning, and Dax was one of those subjects broached. His resentment at failing to score with any women in the night off led to a discussion on how he’d been in Noumena, how dangerously unstable he appeared to be, how he’d taken to the whole idea of slaughtering zombies like a duck to water, how he seemed to think he was one with the Subversion folk, on the same level as them.
Now he was as jealous as fuck of Seth’s relationship with Scarlett, he didn’t trust Seth, and he was under the impression he was somehow being taken for a fool here. Unstable was hardly an adequate summary of the guy right now.
“Getting pretty fucking close to when we’re supposed to be taking the stage with this make-believe band,” Dax snarled, swerving the topic of conversation to something else, clearly aware they both had him pegged as the peeper in the shadows. “How the fuck is this supposed to work, then? Bit hard to pull this off when we don’t really know what the fuck we’re doing.”
“You simple, Dax? We aren’t actually playing. You do realise that?”
“Well somebody fucking expects us to play! We’ve been given a timeslot which has been so neatly and conveniently vacated by a band that you two fucking secret keepers know more than you’re letting on about, what’s going to happen when we don’t front up to play? Then they find us, realise we’re liars and full of shit, we get booted and that’s the fucking end of that. This hasn’t been fucking well thought out at all?”
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE-MONSTROUS CALAMITY
As they moved into the thrum of headbanging humanity, the cordons and clusters of death metal fanatics, curious onlookers, rough customers from Blackwater Parks populace, the melanges of noise assailed their ears. Even though the music was insanely loud, the assortment of different riffs floating in from several directions over anchored rhythm sections and vocals that ranged from subterranean grumbles to more intelligible styles, a strident voice blasted even louder than everything else, designed no doubt to command attention.
“Would members of the band Plaguewielder please make their way to Stage Four as a matter of immediate urgency.”
Though it was only a spoken voice through some type of loudspeaker system, it boomed above the conglomeration of sound generated by a variety of duelling death metal acts and made itself painfully evident to the trio battling through the hordes.
Scarlett and Seth exchanged alarmed glances, mostly ignoring Dax, though his face too blossomed with a look of consternation that swiftly morphed into a viciously smug ‘I fucking told you so’ expression, as the words hammered upon their eardrums more prominently than any of the bands they’d heard over the course of the day.
“Shit!” Seth babbled. “That’s us! Where the hell is Stage Four?”
“Not a clue,” Dax said, the arrogance seeping out of his voice. “Now we’re fucked. They need us onstage. How the hell we gonna get our asses out of this without Simon Fucking Black here to conjure up some bullshit to save us from looking stupid?”
“Never mind that,” Scarlett shot at him, her jawline clenching. “I think Stage Four is over there. If the others are here―and they will be―, they’ll have heard that too. Let’s haul ass over there.”
“Well I don’t know about you, Sweetcheeks, but I’m not really prepared to go onstage and play squat. As you might have noticed, I don’t even have an instrument. Because no motherfucker thinks I can be trusted enough to tote one around. Looks like you lovers can pull this shit out of the fire yourselves.”
“Punking out, Dax?” Seth needled, trying hard to hammer down the wall of panic threatening to topple over on him.
Scarlett said nothing more; she hastened on ahead, the Blizzard Beast slung across her back now, and shooting a final glance in the direction of Dax, Seth was quick to follow. Though his superior expression faltered and slipped back into the familiar scowl, Dax trailed after the pair of them.
***
Stage Four and the surrounding area was a haphazard hive of activity. No band was currently onstage, but from all appearances, the members of the last act to perform there were still up there, taking their own sweet time at getting their gear cleared away and moved to make room for the next outfit. With no pummelling death metal blasting forth from this section, the assembled crowd were either dissipating or thronging around anticipating some sort of fireworks to ensue. What appeared to be staffers and organisers of the event were also in attendance, barking directives at the lackadaisical band members on the stage.
From what Seth could ascertain via murmurs in the crowd and some of the shouted lines that floated through the hubbub, this particular band, Monstrous Calamity, had indeed played to a reception that was a true reflection of their chosen band moniker. This apparently led to them insulting the crowd, the organisers of the festival, all other bands on the bill and a host of other things in between, and now, their set cut short, they weren’t making any haste to clear the stage.
As Se
th and Scarlett came through a sea of folk in death metal T-shirts and patch adorned denim jackets, burly bikers and their rough looking bleach blonde molls, spike adorned black metal sorts in leathers, punks with garish hairdos and an assortment of other interesting examples of humanity, they observed the situation on stage was approaching crisis point.
The members of Monstrous Calamity weren’t the only ones now on the stage; there were numerous members of security making their way up onto the makeshift platform and swarming around the front of it, multiple others who must have belonged to the organisational squad, perhaps promoters or hired hands.
While a couple of the band members were very slowly hauling instruments along, the remainder were flat out refusing to do anything. The vocalist of the quintet was sitting on a Marshall stack swigging from a bottle of beer, a lazy self-satisfied expression traversing his sweaty face, lank wet strands of his brown hair plastered to his forehead and his two equally indolent companions continued hurling insults and epithets in extremely creative coarse language.
A thickset fellow in the milling crowd clad in a Napalm Death hoodie spied Scarlett joining the knots of people still in the vicinity and interest flared on his ruddy, intoxicated visage.
“Well, hello there, gorgeous,” He leered, taking notice of Blizzard’s guitar case in her possession. “You in the next band, are you? Well, fuck me, I reckon I might stick around for that set then. Your set, that is. Looks like a fine set too.”
“Fuck off, idiot!” Seth bristled, looming in between Napalm and Scarlett, then, before the drunken lout could respond, Mark Frost was detaching himself from the crowd with Miranda in tow, both of them hurrying towards Seth and Scarlet, apprehension evident on both of their faces.
Napalm was cut off from any further interaction by the arrival of Mark and Miranda, coinciding with Dax also finally catching up.
“What’s going on here?” Scarlett directed at the other two, who she assumed were present here before the rest of them.
“These guys,” Mark gestured at the melee onstage, which now degenerated to a shoving match between the two rebel guitarists and a couple of security guards while the frontman looked on, amused, still more interested in drinking his beer than anything else. “I don’t know what the hell they were doing, or what they were supposed to be playing, but they just got onstage and started fucking around from the word go. They weren’t in tune, they didn’t even attempt to play any real songs or anything. They sure as hell weren’t playing death metal…I don’t know what the fuck they were doing, but anyway, that went down like a lead balloon. Then when everyone started booing them, jeering, yelling out ‘You suck’ and all that sorta shit, everything went downhill. Now the promoters, security, everybody is trying to get them the hell off stage.”
“Which I guess, is why they want Plaguewielder, AKA us, onstage ASAP. Which we can’t really do until they get rid of those guys…”
“Yeah, so this must have been the slot designated for the absent Biblebasher,” Dax slipped in snidely, a sly knowing look aimed at Seth and Scarlett. “Which you two secretive fucks know something about. You’ve done something to them to make sure we got in. Well, congratufuckinglations, now not only do we have to go on, we have to get on early. In front of a whole crowd of pissed off death heads ready to kick ass on fake DM bands. Like this fantastical Plaguewielder.”
Mark gaped at Dax and his ensuing virulent outburst.
“What the fuck are you going on about? Who did what to Biblebasher? What do you mean?”
“Never mind!” Scarlett snapped. “Your buddy here thinks there’s some big conspiracy that excludes him. There’s no fucking conspiracy, we’re all in the same boat and we need to come up with a plan ASAP. Can you guys even play instruments at all?”
“Yeah, well, we all can…not to any professional level, but…”
Miranda and Mark were looking more perplexed by the second, while Dax plastered on an expression that was becoming immensely familiar to Seth; a dark scowl that mainly encompassed him and Scarlett.
Then Seth noticed, among the throng of employees and Blackwater Park DM Festival folk, somebody he didn’t particularly want to see. Because if she saw them, their chances of formulating a plan and having the time to do so were going straight out the window. The SternBitch from the ticket turnstiles.
“Fuck!” He said, aware that where his little group of friends were located was right in her line of vision if she happened to turn her head to the right. At the moment she was edging towards the stage, where six or seven security guards were finally in the throes of escorting the two guitarists from the area, and the remaining security members were attempting to deal with the smug drunk of a vocalist.
He flung his eyes around the region. It was choking up now with more curious and bemused fans and onlookers, some of those inebriated souls pumped up to aggressive levels by booze and pounding death metal brutality from other areas in the park, looming in, anticipating some violence. As they pushed in closer, they jostled against the fivesome of black metal fanatics, edging them closer to the fray as well.
SternBitch swivelled her head around. Her fierce eyes met Seth’s. His heart thumped. Not in a good way. Recognition flared in her eyes almost immediately.
“Hey!” She shouted and Seth’s hopes of his crew being able to stall this out any longer dissipated into ethereal trails of mist. “You lot, Plaguewielder! Over here, now. Your time is now.”
“Fuck,” Seth repeated, this time a resigned curse of dismay, one echoed by Mark. Total panic coursed across Miranda’s countenance as if the emotion was liquid and she’d just been splashed in the face with a bucket of it. Scarlett remained emotionless, Dax let out something of a nasty cackle.
“Ha, now what the fuck are you idiots going to do? I sure as shit am not getting up in front of these death metal nutbags baying for blood, to be made an example of because your brainless leader doesn’t have a contingency plan!”
“So don’t,” Scarlett shot daggers at him with a withering look. “We’re a four piece. You can run along and find something else to do. You want to play that card now, go ahead. We’ll do this and everything else without you.”
Dax blinked at her, his mouth dropping open to retort, but no words were forthcoming.
Then the crush of interested death metal fanatics and other miscellaneous crowd members surged again, this time essentially doing SternBitch’s bidding for her, carrying the whole lot of them right up to the fore of the scene.
“Good, I see you’re all here,” SternBitch addressed Mark, who ended up being closest to where she stood, just behind a wall of security who were both trying to attend to the Monstrous Calamity dissidents and ensure the rowdy crowd didn’t suddenly swarm the whole stage. At this point in time, Seth was fervently hoping the packed conglomeration of people would overrun the stage and he and the others could attempt to slip away unnoticed. “Well, slight change of plans for you. I know your fill-in slot was slated for eight p.m., but congratulations, you’ll be going on early. Not that much earlier really, it’s just about eight already, but we need you up there and playing pronto. In case you hadn’t noticed, or haven’t all been around paying attention, these knuckleheads have riled up the crowd, left them wanting money back, or blood, or some sort of decent music to compensate for the debacle we’ve just witnessed, so we need to overcome that immediately, if not sooner.”
“Great,” Dax interjected. “So we get thrown to the wolves because of those fucksticks?”
Seth was quick to pick up the ‘we’ reference, the fact that Dax made the snap decision that he was part of things after all, clearly not keen to be tossed out to fend for himself by Scarlett and all the others who would back her to the hilt when they arrived. If they ever arrived. If they were even here.
Obviously, Dax would rather chance his luck as part of the faux band Plaguewielder than watch the upcoming train wreck from the sidelines, and then be banished and shunned by his friends afterwards. If there was an
afterwards.
“Thrown to the wolves?” SternBitch raised an eyebrow. “If you’re any good, this should be right up your alley. This crowd is primed, they’re already warmed up, shouldn’t take too much to win them over.”
“Are you fucking serious? They want to lynch somebody, that’ll be us in the firing line!”
“Look, you’re halfway there, the battle is half won before you’ve even stepped onstage,” SternBitch addressed the protesting Dax, but she was including all of them. “You have two hot chicks in your band and that already makes you one of the greatest drawcards for half of these drunken meatheads. Let me assure you, none of the rest of the bands who’ve played have anything even remotely resembling an attractive female in their line-up, so you’re already winning. I think at this point in time some of these guys are only interested in seeing things like tits and ass, forgetting where they are.”
Seth guessed she was pretty much right on the one account, the fact that sexy women would be something of a drawcard to some of the less musically discerning among the assemblage of spectators. He knew for a fact that he would stand and watch a band that counted somebody looking like Scarlett among its members, even if he knew beforehand that they were absolute rubbish musically or couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket to save their lives.
He supposed some of these people swarming around would be likewise inclined to stick around merely for that reason, though he also knew a shitload of death metal fans were elitists and sexist, dead certain females had no place in death metal. It was a fair bet some of those with that mentality were down there in the crowd, ready to hurl insults and catcalls, already baited to antagonistic and belligerent states by Monstrous Calamity.
“Should have considered having some strippers or something on as well as this,” SternBitch lamented.