by Jim Goforth
Corey clutched the pistol in his sweating hands, praying for their pursuers to keep on moving.
He didn't know how many rounds he had left in the chamber, but one thing was certain, he wouldn't have enough to account for each and every Pleb if the ogres suddenly discovered the hidden foursome and set upon them.
He hoped Desiree had some spare ammunition for the weapon though he doubted if they were caught that he'd be fast enough to reload in the midst of an attack.
Presently the commotion of the Plebs died away to nothing but an eerie silence, seeming to indicate the lawless beasts were searching further afield for their unwelcome house guests.
"Think they're gone?" Hissed Lee in a hoarse whisper.
"I don't know," said Desiree. "I think so. Sounds like it. But these fuckers can be more cunning than you'd give them credit for."
"You'd never guess," said Corey. "Why don't they look a little harder for us?"
"Personally I'm glad they didn't," Lee spoke. "This time and the time before."
Suddenly his eyes narrowed and he gazed intently at Corey and the mass of dried blood caking his clothes and spotting his face.
"Hey Corey. Where's Tim?"
Corey and Desiree exchanged furtive glances and Corey felt a painful lump lodge itself uncomfortably in his throat.
He swallowed hard, not too surprised to find himself blinking back tears.
"He's...well...they got him Lee. He's dead."
"Dead?" Lee exclaimed, his voice almost rising into a high pitched shout before Erica clapped a hand over his mouth, silencing further outbursts.
"Yeah, I'm sorry man. Their friend Erica," Corey indicated Desiree and Tasha. "She's dead as well."
Lee sank back to the ground, eyes shocked and unblinking. He looked like some innocent child who'd just been informed that Santa Claus wasn't real.
"Will you be quiet?" Tasha asked him and as he nodded mutely, she took her hand away from his mouth.
"How...but...what...fuck..." Lee was stupefied, unable to string a coherent sentence together, his features awash with shock.
Corey knew how he was feeling, but the fast paced sequence of events leading up to where they were at now prevented his mind from dwelling on the thought of Tim's dead body growing cold in the Plebs yard.
Thinking too much about it made him simply want to fall to pieces and bawl his eyes out like some heartbroken lover so consequently he tried not to think about it, figuring it was more useful and proactive to think away ways of staying alive.
"He's...Tim's not...he can't be," Lee sat on the earthy ground with disbelieving eyes, his fists randomly clenching and unclenching.
"He is!" Desiree snapped. "C'mon, pull it together; we have to get out of here!"
Lee shot a furious look at her, anger sparking over the pained look in his eyes.
"It's your fault!" He blasted at her. "You and your fucking friends, you all got Tim killed! And we're next, they're gonna get us too!"
"No, we're not next. They won't get us if we're smart," Desiree said firmly, the wave of Lee's accusations seeming to wash right over her, though Corey wondered exactly how she was feeling on the inside right now.
Lee's words rang with a clarity of truth; if it hadn't been for the appearance of Desiree and her friends Tim would still be alive and as uncouth as ever.
The fact that Desiree had lost somebody too was lost on Lee, it meant nothing to him. He hadn't known Erica on any level, the single time he laid eyes upon her manacled and tortured in the Pleb house she could have already been deceased.
"And we're smart," Corey said, trying to placate his anguished friend. "We just have to stay smart, stick together you know. We start fighting amongst ourselves and we are fucked."
"That's right." Desiree patted his thigh. "Now let's get out. Corey you go first, cover the rest of us with the gun."
"Okay," Corey nodded though the last thing he wanted to do was be the first to poke his head out.
If the Plebs were more cunning than they appeared to be they could be out there in wait ready to bludgeon in the skull of the first rabbit foolhardy enough to venture out.
By the same token he felt like a sitting duck in this damp earthly prison so to be out in the night air moving again would be a blessing.
Praying he wasn't about to meet Tim on some limbo plane he crawled quickly out of the earth cave, scrambling through the bushes.
No heavy blunt instrument of death came rushing down to disintegrate his cranium so he jumped to his feet, swinging his gun around.
Now that he'd been without artificial illumination for so long, the light of the moon allowed him to see plenty in the dark and he could see no visible signs of the Plebs bar broken branches and crushed grass marking where the beastly tribe had been.
"All clear!" He called in a low voice and one after the other the rest came out.
Except Lee.
Corey's shell-shocked mate remained in the earthly cave he'd skulked in ever since his original flight from the Plebs, steadfastly refusing to budge.
"He won't come," Desiree told Corey. "We can't move him."
"Lee! Are you fucking simple?" Corey railed, feeling ridiculous bellowing at a scrub covered hole in the ground. "You think these fuckers aren't going to find you eventually? Twice you've been lucky, three times is asking a bit much."
Silence greeted his words. He could have reached inside and shaken Lee until his teeth rattled.
He knew he was speaking the truth; it was only a matter of time before the dumbass Plebs got wise and realised their victims hadn't kept running, but had gone to ground closer to the house.
One thing was for certain, Corey didn't want to lose both his best friends on the same night.
"Lee?" Corey tried again. "This isn't the kind of 'being smart' I was talking about. This is being dumb. Do you want to die?"
"I don't care." Lee's voice echoed back, hollow and empty. "We're all gonna die."
"No, we're not! Come on man, I've got a gun, I've shot two of them."
"You can't get them all."
"No but if we get back to Desi's camp we can all get guns and then it's one sided. These bastards haven't got guns."
More silence was the only response.
"Come on Lee, come on man. You want to get some revenge for Tim don't you? He'd have wanted us to get every last one of these pricks. Can't do that sitting in the ground waiting to die can you?"
Lee didn't answer, but several long moments later his dreadlocked head appeared through the undergrowth and he hauled himself out.
"That’s the spirit," Corey congratulated Lee and patted him on the shoulder.
Scowling, Lee shrugged him off, almost looking as though he wanted to punch Corey in the face or more likely one of the two women he blamed for the death of Tim.
"Come on Lee, don't be like that," Corey cajoled, but he guessed he better not push too hard.
Having Lee out of the hole was probably the best result he could hope for; he couldn't expect Lee to suddenly be the happy go lucky fellow he knew so well, not with the devastating news he'd just received.
"Okay lets bail," Corey decided though he knew full well that Desiree and Tasha had been ready to bail the second they'd exited the cave and it was Lee holding everyone up.
Corey had never in his life been the type of person to assume a leadership responsibility, he'd always been more of a follower, but now he found that somehow a leader type mantle seemed to have settled itself around his neck.
With Tim the natural leader murdered and Lee in a stubborn withdrawn state, Corey realised that bar Desiree, he had nobody else to rely on, but himself.
Maybe it was the gun in his hand which gave him the feeling that he could be a leader, more likely it was the violent frightening experiences he'd already gone through tonight which helped make him stronger rather than breaking him.
Whatever the conclusion, Corey was looking at himself instead of Desiree as the leader here and he knew he was responsible f
or keeping them all alive.
It seemed a big ask of a lad more used to agreeing with a prior decision and trailing along, but Corey believed he was up to the task.
He had to be or, as Lee said, they were all dead.
CHAPTER 12
"Are we going back to get Erica?" Tasha queried, a question met with vehement negative response from Desiree.
"We aren't risking going back inside, last time I almost got killed. If not for Corey I would have been. I bet they've done the same thing, left half of them inside and sent the rest out looking, we have to get away from here without being seen from the house."
"We have to!" Tasha seemed unfazed by the prospect of facing the Plebs again even though of the foursome it was she who'd suffered most at their bestial hands.
She appeared more concerned about the gruesome prospect of leaving Erica's body behind as some macabre plaything for the brutes.
"I'll tell you what we have to do!" Lee exploded. "We have to get the fuck out of this fucking freak show, find the highway and fuck off from this awful place!"
"Says the guy who wouldn't come out of the hole," Tasha shot back at him.
"Shut the fuck up! Both of you!" Corey surprised himself with his snappy order. "We're heading back to the camp. I can't see any of these Plebs around, but that don't mean they aren't here. Let’s move!"
With that said, everybody did move. Desiree led the way, trailed by Tasha and Lee.
Corey with the pistol brought up the rear, a position he didn't want to be in, but knew he had to be.
Tasha moved remarkably well for somebody who'd been in her state for god knows how long and though she walked with a limp, assisted by Desiree she didn't appear particularly suffering a great deal from the other injuries.
Corey guessed that it was mainly superficial cuts and bruising, nasty to look at, but presenting no real hindrance to her progress.
He couldn't recall when Tasha stopped being naked, supposing that Desiree dressed her just prior to the returning Pleb invasion, for she was dressed again most likely in the clothes she'd had before the brutish Plebs stripped her to hang up and torture.
She wasn't at all as nervous as Lee, trekking through the bush where they could be ambushed any second.
She conversed in low tones with Desiree while Lee looked as jumpy as a skittish dog, his eyes constantly darting from side to side, his hands still clutching the hunting knife he'd been given what seemed like several centuries ago.
"What in fucks name are those ugly bastards?" Lee blurted out of nowhere as if he'd been mulling over the question for a while waiting for the right time to expel it. "And what happened to us just giving them pot and we'd be on our way safe and sound? You girls fucked us over big time didn't you? You lied to us, you fucked us over, you got Tim AND your own friend killed, and now we're likely to end up the same way aren't we? I'd like some fucking answers because I think I fucking well deserve them. Somebody gonna talk to me, help me understand this bullshit?"
Corey was going to talk to him, he was going to tell him to pipe down and wait until they were all safely out of the woods before calling explanation time.
He too wanted those answers Lee sought because what Lee said was very very true.
The girls had seduced them into a mission far more dangerous than any of them, even Desiree, made out and consequently Tim had paid the ultimate price.
Now however, wandering through the Pleb laden woods in the dead of night was not the time to seek those answers.
The quieter they all remained until they reached safety the better.
What did prevent Corey from immediately answering or responding to Lee's query was something else entirely.
Maybe it was because all his senses were on keen overdrive, ready for him to fight or take flight that he noticed it before anybody else even though he was at the rear of the party.
He tipped his head back like a bloodhound on the scent, flaring his nostrils. Inhaling the aroma of the night, smelling something else, something dangerous.
Something which sent cold chills of warning along his spine.
"You guys smell that?"
"What?" Lee obviously couldn't.
"Stop." Corey halted proceedings. "Everybody. Smell that? Smoke. Something's burning."
Desiree's gorgeous eyes widened in sudden alarm and fear as she sniffed at the air.
The closer they seemed to get to their destination, especially once they descended the hillside, the stronger the smell seemed to get.
A thick burning acrid smoky aroma, unnatural, not just the smell of wood smoke thrown off by the bonfire in the camp.
Other things were burning too, not just wood, unpleasant smells, the smell of meat cooking...no...meat burning to charcoal crisp.
"Oh fuck!" Screamed Desiree, her voice laced with a mixture of terror and panic. "The camp!"
The horrifying realisation that it couldn't be anything, but the camp of the girls on fire sent shockwaves throughout the quartet, even Lee was galvanized out of his stupor.
"Fuck, run, run!" Desiree hollered.
"I can't!" Natasha wailed, waving her hands wildly in the air in a gesture of sheer hopelessness.
If only Tim were here, Corey inwardly lamented, he could have carried Tasha piggyback with the greatest of ease.
But Tim wasn't here. Tim was dead; his corpse sprawled ungraciously in the back yard of the Pleb house.
"Do your best hun," Desiree prodded, beside herself with trepidation. "Come on, our fucking houses are burning down!"
"Go on without me," Tasha urged. "I'll catch up."
"I'm not leaving you behind!"
"You and Corey go on," Lee spoke up. "I'll help Tasha along. We'll be okay."
Corey was in a dreadful quandary.
Should he give the gun to Lee or should he keep it? He certainly didn't want Lee and Tasha to fall victim to the Plebs if they suddenly fell too far behind, too slow to move quick enough to escape.
He didn't have a great deal of time to ruminate on the issue; fairly dancing from foot to foot in a fearful panic Desiree snatched at his arm.
"Come on! Come on!"
"Be careful!" Corey urged Lee and Tasha, his heart beating like a maniacal drum. "Please, keep a look out, be damn careful!"
Then Desiree took off, sprinting away like a greyhound on the trail of that just out of reach mechanical hare and Corey was forced to run after her before she was swallowed up by the dark.
It was a dangerous business charging madly through the darkened woods, a pistol clenched in one hand, a flashlight in his pocket thumping his ribcage with each move.
He thought about the prospects of tripping over, sprawling in the grass and either shooting himself or unfortunately putting a bullet into the back of Desiree.
To the best of his knowledge he believed he'd switched the safety back on whilst hunched in the earthen cave, but he wouldn't have sworn on Tim's grave that he definitely had.
It was too late to check now; all he could do was run like the wind and pray desperately that his innate clumsiness didn't spring up with another monkey wrench in the cogs of his fortune.
Desiree was babbling to herself as she ran, breath huffing, a maddening litany of muttered desperate words Corey didn't quite catch.
He supposed she was willing everything to be okay, but as they burst out of the final stand of trees and into the clearing where the women tribe had made their homes, he saw that it wasn't okay. Nothing was okay, because nothing remained.
Great roiling black clouds of acrid vile smoke poured into the sky with a savage choking intensity and they weren't issuing from the bonfire formerly blazing in the centre of the clearing.
They came from big mounds of black ashes, these burning places located all around the clearing in a circle.
Corey didn’t have to be Einstein to realise that these ashes were the remains of the girl’s village, each and every wooden structure now razed to the ground.
As devastatingly horrific as th
is scene was, this ashen wreckage of smoking smoldering ruins, so rapidly and so entirely incinerated, it was scarcely the worst of it.
Other blackened objects littered the whole site, clustered in the enormous circle of dark where the bonfire blazed, strewn haphazardly across other areas of smoking debris.
Eyes blank, with a brain numbing shock Corey stared down at one of these grotesque crispy charcoal things laying a mere couple of metres from his feet.
The deadly intense heat of the blaze had done a fairly decent job of twisting and warping this item into something other than its original form, but Corey didn't have to gaze too hard at it as if he were inanely staring at some 3D Magic Eye puzzle to acknowledge what it was.
Seared to a blackened crisp it was the skeletal remains of a human hand, black bony fingers curled, clutching lifelessly at nothing.
It wasn't just the acknowledgement, it was also the putrid smell of all manner of unspeakable things burning filling the air which caused Corey to bend double, heaving spasmodically.
He could hardly recall when he'd last eaten and it must have been quite a while ago for as he hunched over, dry retching and gagging, he could expel nothing from his stomach but a thin yellow stream of bile, a foul tasting brew which seemed to burn all the way up his throat.
Even long after he appeared to have exhausted that supply he remained bent over, eyes tearing and burning, throat stinging, breathing in the noxious vapours of the various burning matter.
Desiree didn't, or hadn't appeared to have noticed Corey's stomach kicking up strong disagreement to the whole appalling scenario.
Her back to him, she'd dropped helplessly to her knees on the outskirts of the whole blackened mess, her hatchet slipping from her fingers to thump softly on grass not yet extinguished by the fire blast.
Corey felt too weak to stand.
He sank to the ground on his rump, unconsciously attempting to dry around his mouth with the back of his hand.
Inside his mouth it felt as dry as sandpaper, as if he'd come off a surfboard and planted his open mouth in the sand at the ocean bottom.
