by Goforth, Jim
“I’ll tell you who should be thrown to the wolves,” A beefy security guard with a shaven head, closely trimmed moustache, and goatee said. “These goddamn instigators here. Should just let them go, let the crowd have at them. But that would hardly be the fucking responsible thing.”
He grunted, looking as if he’d swallowed something incredibly distasteful, obviously not impressed with the idea of having to bodyguard and protect the idiotic members of Monstrous Calamity to get them out of the Park altogether. Again, Seth was of the mindset that maybe that was a fantastic idea on the guards’ behalf. Let the smirking, foul-mouthed Monstrous Calamity members be handed over to the baying brutalitarians in the congregation of fans to sort out those who were prepared to get onstage and fuck around and then go so far as to hurl insults at anybody who’d paid to see them perform at least a competent set.
“I assume you don’t have any drums,” SternBitch continued speaking, ignoring the guard’s suggestion as she cast her eye around the five people she supposed were all the members who comprised the band Plaguewielder. “Even if you do, if you’ve got roadies or friends or whatever in the process of bringing them, forget it. We don’t have time to stuff around setting up another kit. That whole backline up there, the drum kit, all of that belongs to us―the organisers—so it’s all ready to go for quick changeovers. There are a handful of bands on the bill who have travelled and haven’t brought full kits, so they are the bands being put on this stage.”
“I have my own cymbals,” Mark added blankly, as if compelled to explain the case of Tempest’s he clutched.
“Good for you. Like I said, won’t be necessary. You’ll have to make do with the kit up there. It’s a pretty comprehensive one, we’ve had no complaints all day…well, up until these profound idiots got up there and turned things into a circus. Now, just so we’re clear, our sincere apologies for throwing you up there like this with zero changeover time, no chance to sound check or whatnot, but rest assured you will be compensated for it. For a start, you will be receiving your own pay―for filling in and replacing Biblebasher, especially at such short notice—and you will also be collecting what money would have been going to that poor excuse who’ve just been shown the door.”
A grin suddenly exploded on the visage of Dax, an uncharacteristic one for him, at least with regards to his demeanour the last couple of days.
“Yeah, okay then. Now you’re talking. Let’s do this then!” He prompted, his smarmy grin encompassing his Plaguewielder bandmates. Seth and Scarlett exchanged bemused glances while both Miranda and Mark were still looking desperately as if they wished a UFO of some description would swoop down from the night skies to abduct them.
SternBitch plastered an unexpected smile on her face and in that moment she didn’t seem so businesslike, straight down the line and abrupt, she was actually quite attractive though the natural set of her face was to accommodate hard lines and a no-nonsense demeanour.
“Go on then, get up there. Blow these people away. Failing that, keep them interested. Two hot women, remember. Half the battle already won.”
This is going to fucking blow up like a nuclear warhead, Seth lamented. And not in a good way.
There was no way of escaping this predicament. Not without Black and company appearing to make a miraculous save of epic proportions with some gargantuan diversion, and as far as any of them knew, the Subversion crew and the other women hadn’t yet made it inside the Blackwater Park.
Before any of them could huddle together in some semblance of a pow-wow, Dax was off and away, aiming for the stage, unchecked by the others.
“Fuck!” Mark moaned, a last desperate look at Seth and Scarlett, nominating them as the ones to take cues from. “We’re fucked…”
“Come on,” Scarlett shrugged. “Can’t do any worse than Monstrous Calamity, can we?”
“Yes!” Miranda wailed.
Hefting the Blizzard Beast high, Scarlett traipsed after the departed Dax, and Seth, heart thumping in that painfully erratic familiar manner, followed, inwardly hoping for some attention stealing phenomena to suddenly materialise and steal the limelight away from him and his faux band. With last terrified looks at one another, Mark and Miranda followed.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO-PLAGUEWIELDER
In a daze, Seth stood on stage, gazing down at a sea of faces, a veritable slew of death metal T-shirts adorning a host of headbangers, male and female alike, leather jackets, denim patch jackets, chains, jewellery, long hair, shaved heads, elaborate facial hair, so many metal characteristics down there it made his head swim. The last time he could recall seeing so many metal heads assembled in one place they were all undead freaks, swarming over any living human they came across, streaming from the dead zone of the Quo Vadis Bar.
The fear felt then was replaced here by an entirely different kind of terror. The numbing, constricting, muscle-seizing, panicked terror of not knowing exactly how the fuck it reached this stage, where he and his fellow members of a band that technically didn’t even exist were not only expected to perform, but perform well and break the belligerent antagonistic mindset and attitudes engendered in this assemblage by Monstrous Calamity.
Right now, no fear was more crippling than the one where they were catapulted into a spotlight that was never supposed to happen. A part of a plan that wasn’t intended to come to fruition. Not in this way.
As he gazed blankly out over the raucous hordes below, he observed that he could see other bands and circle pits, crowds assembled around other stages. He could even see the edge of the dark wooded areas of the park where he and Scarlett crept away and then fucked in a rapid, delicious tryst. He tried to concentrate on that, tried to infuse himself with the passion felt in those wonderful moments, hoping in some way to ignite something of worth inside him. Something he could draw on here to prevent himself from going down in flames, dying a tragic musical death on this stage.
“Dax,” Scarlett announced sharply. “Can you play bass? Yeah? Then you’ve got the Blizzard Beast.”
Glancing across at Dax, Seth saw unbridled joy blossom on the guy’s face, all traces of the resentment and anger which was bordering on sheer hatred leeched out of his countenance in the responsive expression. As Scarlett handed off Blizzard’s bass to him, Dax looked once more like the old Dax, the real Dax. The one who a multitude of circumstances and situations looked to be drowning under a plethora of new personalities seeking to take over and make Dax’s body and mind their own vessel to dwell in.
Seeing that sparked a little enthusiasm in Seth. He didn’t want to lose Dax in any capacity, though recently Dax was capable of doing enough stupid shit to lose himself and alienate all his friends. Maybe this would somehow drag the old Dax back from the brink and completely supplant that insane version furiously fighting to seize control of all of Dax’s faculties. As he watched Dax step down to unclasp the case containing the stygian and crimson coloured Blizzard Beast, Seth was struck by a thrilling idea of his own. That meant fate decreed that he got to wrap his hands around the lethal beauty, Mother North, after all. Certainly not in any violent zombie killing capacity, but if he was to be the guitarist of this charlatan concocted band, then that meant Mother North was his. At least for the duration of this set. However long that was meant to be.
Almost as if she was inside his head, reading his fevered thoughts, SternBitch shouted, “Forty minutes. On the dot. Not one minute over. And try not to be too much under.”
Mark jerked his thumb up in a gesture to indicate, sure that was cool, even though of the lot of them he looked most like a rabbit trapped in the glare of headlights, a semi-trailer bearing down on him. Miranda, too looked paralysed with fear.
“What the hell am I supposed to be doing here?” She wanted to know.
“Seth,” Scarlett hissed. “Open up Mother North, there are microphones in there.”
“What?” Miranda was aghast. “I’m supposed to sing?”
“Just follow my lead,” Scarlett suggested. “I’ll be the v
ocalist, you be back up.”
“I can’t sing!” Miranda wailed, almost so loud Seth was certain her voice must have carried to those in the front closest, but with the pounding, pulsating soundtrack of varied types of death metal carrying from elsewhere in the park, along with the ensemble of noise created by those inebriated death heads below, their presence pockmarked by the bikers, the rough women, the punks, all the others, it was confined to just the quintet on stage.
As Seth knelt with Black’s guitar case at his feet, unclasping and opening it up almost reverently, he spied Napalm Death push through the building congregation, struggling to force his considerable bulk to the front.
“Yeah!” the overweight death head hooted in a stentorian voice. “Fuck yeah! Get your tits out!”
Resisting the urge to give him the finger and probably inspire more ire from those below, Seth concentrated on the exquisite vision of the deadly Mother North, reclining in her red velvet surrounds. There were, he observed, a couple of microphones there as well, and, of course, guns. Firearms lifted from the service station of slaughter. Gazing down at them brought thoughts of all that carnage rushing back to him, and he hastily laid his hands upon the frightening, but captivating shape of Mother North as Scarlett scooped up the microphones.
There was a standing microphone at the front of the stage which Seth guessed was considered part of the whole backline, but for the purposes here, Miranda needed something in her hand, even if it wasn’t actually plugged into anything. He assumed, to carry out the façade, they would need to plug it in somewhere; there were plenty of drunks down there who would be none the wiser, but they weren’t all so off their heads that some of them wouldn’t realise Miranda was trying to pull a Milli Vanilli on them.
Mark stood in something of a quandary, not certain whether he was meant to unleash the Funeral and Freezing Moons and set them up, but Scarlett gave him a brief shake of the head. SternBitch was adamant they get their music cranking immediately, if not sooner; there was no time to be screwing around replacing the current cymbals with those monstrous weapons of Tempest’s. He needed sticks; that was about the extent of time he could afford to waste.
“And these are actual instruments?” Seth whispered to Scarlett, seeking confirmation that Mother North and the Blizzard Beast doubled as more than the deadly awe-inspiring weapons lurking beneath their guitar-like appearances.
“Of course,” Scarlett whispered back, amusement colouring her tone. “Don’t stress, babe, this isn’t going to be as bad as you might think.”
“Glad to hear it,” he replied, though even coming from her, the words did not fill him to the brim with unbridled confidence.
As he brought Mother North out, feeling her wicked curves in his hands, he felt imbued with a sensation of power and awe. It might have been completely stupid and illogical, but hefting her up and laying his fingers upon her lethal beauty made him feel oddly empowered and wildly enthralled to have her within his possession. She felt nothing at all like his trusty old Ibanez, the faithful instrument he jammed along in many a loose impromptu unhinged jam session with Mark, Dax, Buck, and Lincoln back in their home town, but never used in any form of performance outside that.
He went through the motions of plugging into one of the Marshall stacks in the backline, hooking up pedals and moving towards another standing mic set on the left hand side of the stage as if he were in a bizarre fugue, but one in which the panic and butterflies of fear virtually evaporated to nothing except for a faint buzz humming in the distant recesses of the back of his mind.
Over on the right side of the stage, Dax completed his own set up and stood, grinning like a lunatic, a sheen on his face as if he’d already begun to perspire. The awesome might of the red and black Blizzard Beast was clasped worshipfully in his grasp, his feet splayed apart, and he looked as though there was nothing better he could imagine himself doing than what he was just about to do.
Seth didn’t dare turn his head back to see how Mark might be faring behind the community drum kit, for fear his eyes on the dumbfounded ring-in sticksman would cause him to topple backwards off his stool, and as for Miranda, he imagined her tension and fear levels were as optimised as they could get. False confidence inspired by the fearsome instrument weapons belonging to Subversion was one thing for those with them in their possession, but for the rest, especially the likes of Miranda, it was going to be nigh on impossible to conjure up any kind of enthusiasm at all, much less self-assurance.
Scarlett stalked to the front of the stage and Seth’s attention was drawn immediately to her, her movements cat-like and sexy, yet imbued with a poised sureness that guaranteed eyes were on her. Not just those of Seth, but many sets from the collective of death metal fans and interested spectators gathered before the stage, spanning back in what was a rapidly building pack. Crowd noise escalated as they saw the slim, but abundantly curvy woman step to the fore, clearly the front person for this unknown quality band not one of them here were in any way familiar with.
Napalm Death was one of the most vocal appreciators, stumbling around at the front with a can of beer held unsteadily in his hand. He hoisted it skywards in conjunction with the roar of the crowd thronged around him and liquid splashed from it, splattering over the person to his right, who either ignored it or completely failed to notice it. Others were hurling arms high as well, jamming the night air with the metal horns, some punching holes in the sky with clenched fists, more containing drinks like sweaty-faced Napalm.
On a whim, Seth ran his fingers along the fretboard of Mother North, and though he had no plectrum, he’d almost always jammed with his buddies sans one, so this wouldn’t be much different―he hoped. Then he launched unprompted into the rapid paced intro of Cannibal Corpse’s ‘Fucked With a Knife’. Technically, had they rehearsed this in any way, the song would initiate with a tick of hi-hats and a powerful barrage of battery in conjunction with the razoring guitar work, but since nobody was expecting it to abruptly regale the conglomeration of death metallers and other spectators before the stage, it came out courtesy of Seth’s instrument only.
Though he hadn’t thought it through in the slightest, it happened almost as a spur of the moment decision, Seth supposed that particular song must have leapt foremost into his mind for a variety of reasons. One, it was a track he knew, and he and his friends had played it before numerous times together; and two, the riff was an instantly identifiable one, recognised almost universally by those in the death metal scene.
It garnered an immediate reaction in the crowd and the noise heightened even more prominently than when they’d witnessed a stunningly gorgeous woman holding the microphone aloft. Though Mark was a few beats behind, he too latched onto the riff and caught up quick, hammering at his borrowed drum kit, and while Seth wasn’t sure if he might have managed to hang Scarlett out to dry with this random song choice, he guessed he could probably growl out the lyrics into his stand-alone microphone if she hadn’t a clue.
Instead, as he glanced across at her, she raised one eyebrow at his arbitrary selection and then gave him a barely perceptible nod, accompanying it with a slight smile of approval. Over beyond her on the opposing end of the stage as him, Dax too hadn’t been lax in jumping onto the instantly detectible burst of speedy death metal and chimed in with his bass, or rather Blizzard’s bass, the colossal Blizzard Beast.
The wall of sound ripping out of the combination of instruments was phenomenal, and sent chills rippling up Seth’s spine even though he was responsible for the crisp sharp lines of guitar slicing through the atmosphere. He could scarcely believe it, he felt as though his hands were in some way possessed as the fingers of the left glided over the frets and his right forefinger pinched against his thumb like he were clutching an invisible plectrum, hammered the strings. Despite the pace of the song, he hadn’t missed a note or fucked up the riff, not so he’d noticed anyway, and his rhythm section appeared to be on song with their accompaniment, and when Scarlett joined the melee
with her vocals, the hair stood up on the back of his neck. Shit, it seemed as though every hair on his entire body stood up.
Though the song wasn’t one of the gruffer and more guttural efforts of the brutal Florida entity, with a handful of high notes pitched into the mix, the sound of Scarlett’s voice giving vent to some heinous lyrics among the thuggish blend of instrumentation was mesmerising. Seth and his fellow bandmates weren’t the only ones to think so. The crowd was loving it. As Seth allowed himself a transitory glimpse out there, he spied SternBitch, looking neither particularly stern, nor particularly bitchy at the moment. She looked as enthralled as the rest of the now rather large accumulation of spectators, and she caught his glance long enough to thrust two thumbs up at him.
The one member of the mythical Plaguewielder, who right now was showing there was a little more than mere Spinal Tap to the band, Miranda, wasn’t merely standing by either.
Seth couldn’t really tell whether she was singing along or merely pulling off a stunning lip sync job, the music was roaring in his ears, but she’d shucked off her jacket and then proceeded to strip off her T-shirt as well. Now clad in just a black lacy bra, she windmilled in no particular set rhythm, but her sinuous motions had the crowd eating out of her hand as comprehensively as the rest of them did.
Clearly it hadn’t bothered Mark, or perhaps he hadn’t yet noticed it for there was no break in his drumming, no missed beat or stutter, and the brief track ran smooth to its culmination, drawing a crescendo of sound from those true death metal fanatics down there, even the casual bystanders and fair-weather metal fans.
Not only was the chosen song a classic among those purveyors of all things brutal and death metal related, but the fact that its sadistic and prurient subject matter was belted out by an achingly beautiful woman, or rather two of them, drove the crowd into raptures. What was more, one of the apparent co-vocalists was almost half unclad, wearing only a bra which barely kept her bountiful breasts in place. They’d been jiggling and bouncing around in motions that kept the attention of many a male, and possibly plenty of females, in the crowd captivated throughout, and while Miranda may have seemed lost in a terrified world of bewilderment prior to them all being hustled up onstage, obviously she’d been with it enough to capture the lamenting words of SternBitch regarding the fact that she should have had strippers present to cater to the idiots who only wanted to see tits and ass.