by Goforth, Jim
Because it was such a relatively short song, Seth guessed that may have been further incentive for his fingers to take their own initiative and start flying over the strings, with perhaps the subconscious notion that they had less chance to fuck up on a short composition, but by that logic he should have gone for a blink and you’ll miss it grindcore number. Something from Napalm Death’s classic ‘Scum’ album probably would have been right up the fat guy at the front’s alley, but wouldn’t have given them much breathing space to figure out what they were going to conjure up next.
As it was, Seth didn’t have any clue what they were going to do next. Two minutes and a handful of seconds out of an approximate forty minute set down left a whole shitload of time unaccounted for. Their introduction to the crowd went off like a rocket, had the formerly aggressive lot of people down there baying not for the blood of sacrificial lambs, but for more from the sexy death metal front women and their capable energetic band, and while Dax was over there basking in the adulation, striding around with the behemoth Blizzard Beast, Seth painfully acknowledged he had nothing.
Maybe some witty banter would chew up a few more seconds, minutes if any of them could span it out to that, but these folks paid for songs, they wanted death metal, and one song and a host of gibberish wouldn’t cut it. Besides, Seth had jackshit in that department as well. He didn’t know what to say that was witty enough or even worth saying to the drunken hordes or death metal elite aside from yelling out a handful of names of seminal DM outfits and perhaps a host of generic metal catchcries.
Then inspiration clubbed him in the head like a gravity blast and a gleefully malevolent seed of thought formed. Again, he wasn’t sure how the rest of his bandmates might cope with his next choice, hell he didn’t know how it would pan out for him, but it was an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up. If Cannibal Corpse was a favourite, then it was probably a safe bet there might be myriad Deicide fanatics down there too.
He leaned in to his microphone, the sizzling power of Mother North still warming his hands as Scarlett stood stiff-legged in the centre of the stage, her feet wide apart and Dax continued to parade and grandstand, while somewhere behind them Miranda and Mark were doing whatever Miranda and Mark might happen to be doing.
The air-punching, horns throwing, shouting mass of the crowd were expectantly waiting for what might be coming next from this curious band most didn’t even yet know the name of, and staring down into the sea of faces, Seth felt more than a fraction overwhelmed.
Nonetheless, he dredged up what he hoped was a suitably cavernous growling utterance and announced it into his microphone.
“Biblebasher!”
Then chaos ensued.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE-STAGE VIOLATORS
The mass of folk down there, predominantly large males in either height, stature, or girth clad almost exclusively in shirts proclaiming the likes of Corpse, Obituary, Nile, Death, Morbid Angel, Napalm Death, Six Feet Under and a whole menagerie of others suddenly split, with a few members bursting out of the gathering and launching towards the stage.
“There’s the fucking bitch!” Came a stentorian bellow that boomed above even the soundtrack of music issuing from further afield.
Before Seth was afforded another opportunity to see if he could wrench more magic out of the phenomenal Mother North, in the form of the Deicide track he’d chosen as a mocking little stab at the band his Plaguewielder had replaced here, he was witness to the fact that those he was about to musically take the piss out of were the very people charging from the crowd, rushing the stage.
There was Ralph, the man-mountain sporting an ugly discoloured bruise and a jagged scabbing laceration on his chrome dome, his long, braided goatee swinging as he assailed the stage, bringing his sizeable bulk right up onto it amidst the ‘musicians’ currently residing there.
There was Tre, his mouth looking swollen with lips slightly larger than they should have been, mottled with sores that came from being busted in the lower face with a ceramic ashtray, his dirty brown locks flying around his face as he scaled the stage as adeptly as his large, muscled partner.
There were four, five, six others, potential Biblebasher bandmates or associates, all dressed in black T-shirts advertising brutal death metal bands or hoodies, one of them ridiculously huge in comparison even to Tre and Ralph, the dissenter of the bunch dressed in a black singlet, his arms comprehensively covered in grim tattoos of piled skulls, naked women, spiders and similar cheerful motifs.
While Ralph and Tre came right up the front of the stage and onto the platform with surprising ease, belying their bulky apelike sizes, the rest of their entourage swamped the rest of the stage, coming up either side, completely cutting off any thoughts of escape. This octet wasn’t even the extent of the unwelcome welcoming party, the gig crashers, they were just the first wave. Coming from the outskirts of the crowd, the fringes where spaces existed between the gathered folk here to watch the as yet unannounced Plaguewielder and knots of spectators thronged around other active bands in the large open air venue, were other fast moving individuals who evidently bore the same vicious intentions as Biblebasher and their cronies.
Seth didn’t get any chance to stand around counting just how many assailants might be coming to ambush because abruptly the stage was full. It was too full, it was overcrowded.
Ralph and Tre both went for Scarlett. Neither one of them a gentleman, neither above slugging women. They both hit her around the same time, a huge swinging bunched fist from Ralph smashing her in the side of the head and a savage brutal jab from Tre smacking her right in the midriff.
The microphone fell out of her hand, clattering almost soundlessly onto the deck of Stage Four as she buckled and dropped to her knees alongside it. Ralph assaulted her again, with a clubbing blow that bounced off the back of her head and she toppled forward, and over the edge of the stage, dropping out of sight altogether.
Seth heard a scream ripped from Miranda and some weird strangled sound of horror and fury come from his own throat, and then he was surrounded by the first wave coming up the right-hand side of the stage, three brutes in faded jeans. Fists were flying at him, he could just about see the grinning silver skulls of chunky rings adorning clenched fingers, announcing his impending doom before they connected with his face, his jaw, knocking him into a daze. He saw stars, he felt as though his head had spontaneously combusted, then he vaguely acknowledged that he was falling as well. It seemed to take a long time for him to reach the ground; he realised that was where he was going. Over the edge of the stage as well, Mother North still tightly clenched in his desperate hands.
He wondered how he’d managed to keep a grip on her and hoped the cunning casing housing the deadly wicked blades inside Mother North somehow didn’t come off and eviscerate him on his drop to below.
Sounds of chaos erupted around him as he tangled in the grass, falling crookedly, landing in a position that felt unnatural, yet caused him no pain, at least not in comparison to the wildfire of agony spread all over his face. Nonetheless, he still didn’t release Mother North.
He heard painful yells, grunts, screams, meaty thuds and thumps from the stage above and could only assume the remaining members of Plaguewielder were enduring the full force of the Biblebasher entourage, being blindsided and having the shit kicked out of them, Miranda included, female or otherwise. After all, they’d launched straight into Scarlett with a brutal cavalcade of blows, they’d make no exception for the girl just in her bra. Hell, she was probably copping a whole lot worse than a few punches.
Seth wanted desperately to reposition himself so he could see where Scarlett’s body lay crumpled, but his whole head felt as though it were about to come apart in busted eggshell pieces and he could taste blood in his mouth.
There was a rush of air as something whistled past him, then he saw a couple of sets of booted feet thumping the grass alongside him. One of those black pieces of footwear came scything up from where it landed, conveni
ently nearby his ribs and made a brutal connection with that portion of his body.
“Now we’re going to fuck you motherfuckers up and fuck these bitches!” Ralph’s voice, an ugly sound, like gravel being poured down a sewer of sludge. Seth was pretty certain it was also his boot which connected savagely with his aching ribs, twisting him over awkwardly atop Mother North. Though he felt like at least half a dozen of them were cracked with the forceful blow, it didn’t seem to be the case; the pain still didn’t equate to that ringing in his cranium. At least he was now facing over in the direction of where the limp figure of Scarlett had fallen headlong off the stage.
She still lay over there, a crumpled shape that looked small and helpless amidst a crowd of legs in faded denim and patches on leather. Only a couple of metres of grass separated them, but she felt so far away, almost impossible to reach. Especially with the Biblebasher crew and their supports standing in his way. Those latest arrivals hadn’t swamped the stage like the first wave of actual band members had, they’d remained down at the foot of it, and now that Scarlett and Seth were down on the ground they raced to lay boots in.
Briefly, the thought occurred to Seth just how perfectly timed the attack was by the wronged and vengeful Biblebashers. With various factions of the security force obviously remaining in their sectors around other stages in Blackwater Park, where either bands were currently performing or adhering to their duties in allocated regions, that meant that ninety per cent of Stage Four’s security, if not all of them, were busy, cunningly tied up by the antics of Monstrous Calamity.
It almost reeked of a deliberate set-up, or might have done if not for the obvious fact that Monstrous Calamity wouldn’t have known about Plaguewielder replacing Biblebasher. Biblebasher themselves wouldn’t even have known. Or would they?
Whatever the case, it was all completely irrelevant right now, while Seth was sprawling over the top of a lethal instrument weapon he couldn’t quite manage to get his hands around properly to make use of, boots raining down on him in a hellish hail of hurt.
From what he could see of Scarlett, it didn’t even look as though she’d moved at all. A horrible insidious thought that she may have landed awkwardly on her head as she fell, snapping her neck, permeated into his being and drove him in a fearful panic to haul himself up even with the cronies of the Biblebashers dancing around him, in and out with brutal blows.
He saw Tre and Ralph aiming for that fallen figure of Scarlett. He saw them preparing to unleash violent vengeance on her helpless body, unchecked by security, with nobody around, their thuggish band of friends and co-brutes preventing any of the stunned onlookers who were watching a concert one second and then a savage beating the next, from getting close enough to stop them.
Or so he thought. For he then saw somebody he hadn’t seen all day, since the splitting of factions at the ticket turnstiles.
Black. Tempest. Blizzard. Roxana. Lizette. Heather. They all came in a pack and they blasted into Tre and Ralph in a ferocious barrage that made the stage hijack look like child’s play.
Black hit Ralph first, with big fists as equally loaded with chunky silver rings as some of those who’d hammered on Seth’s face, and Seth had seen plenty of those rings ever since falling into company with the Subversion clan. Some of them weren’t just big and solid, they were adorned with spiky sections, little pieces of dangerous adornment that could be utilised as weaponry. As they were now.
Tempest came in on Ralph next as the rest of them swamped Tre and beat him down to the ground, led by Blizzard, and then Heather, wielding an alcohol bottle by the neck. From his tangled position on the ground, among a field of Biblebasher crony legs, Seth watched Heather smash that bottle downwards in a vicious thrust that must be destined to hammer against Tre’s downed body. The charge by Tempest into Ralph, the chrome-dome’s already lacerated, bruised face opened up by Black’s face-raking rings, smashed the bald Biblebasher against the front of the stage, where Tempest proceeded not to lay punches into him, but to use his clenched fists to hold the stunned brute in place against the frame while he battered his face with a headbutt that splattered new blood.
Black didn’t wait around to see if there were any crumbs to be picked up from Tre and Ralph, it was evident there wouldn’t be. Instead, he vaulted onto the stage where the pack of Biblebashers who’d remained would be laying waste to Mark, Dax, and Miranda.
From his position on the ground, suddenly left alone as his ambushers realised the Subversion cavalry were coming to the rescue in violent fashion, Seth couldn’t see what was unfolding up there on the stage, but even with just Black so far arriving up there, he knew the lopsided asskicking was about to even up a fraction.
The rest of the quartet stomping and grinding Tre into a pile of pulp on the grass, abandoned that pursuit and, while Roxana stooped down alongside Scarlett, Blizzard and the other two women swivelled to face Seth’s attackers. The trio might have been outnumbered, but with Heather swinging her bottle like a lunatic and Blizzard clearly not perturbed by wading into battle with any number of assailants, the group formerly surrounding Seth faltered a little. Then more of the crowd broke ranks, surprisingly the fat, sweaty Napalm Death guy, along with a handful of biker sorts in leathers, chains, and bandanas and a couple of other typically death metallers. As Seth hunched back against the stage, valiantly trying to suck in enough breaths to allow him an attempt to stand, he witnessed who this new pack of aggressors were going for. They hurled themselves into the fray by ambushing the Biblebasher horde before Blizzard, Lizette, and Heather could even fight fire with fire, a couple of the burly bearded biker fellows even boosting themselves up on stage.
Judging from the way they set upon the Biblebashers, Seth could only surmise that Black, and now Tempest, who’d dropped a comprehensively bloodied Ralph to the crushed grass at the front of the stage, were not going to be alone in saving Dax, Miranda, and Mark from further violent pain up there.
Seth’s head swam, not just from the torrent of violent blows inflicted upon him, but from the convoy of brutally rapid activity raging in a melee all around. It wasn’t merely a case of the surprise arrival of Biblebasher and their vengefully vicious actions threatening to boil over into an all in brawl, it had already descended to that level. Drunken death heads already spoiling for a fight or any violence, spilled into the arena, goaded into belligerence by Monstrous Calamity, and now, cheated of the chance to witness further musical shenanigans and potential titillation from sexy women singers in this unknown band who’d been roughly attacked.
The sheer weight of numbers which was heavily stacked in the favour of Biblebasher and their buddies at the initial point of surprise violence, was now seesawing unevenly up the other way with the bikers, the resentful death metallers and those who felt suitably slighted by the Monstrous brigade airing brutal grievances with the concert interrupters.
Violence was erupting everywhere in a storm of aggression as punches flew, boots slammed into fallen bodies, chunks of dirt and grass ripped up from the ground, flying in clods as the action persisted.
Seth didn’t think he’d sustained much more than superficial damage, no busted teeth or broken bones, though his chest and ribs felt as though he’d attempted to crash tackle an anvil. He wasn’t greatly concerned with that right at the immediate moment, his pressing worry was for Scarlett. He couldn’t even see her anymore through the thick of bodies brawling in the space between where he’d fallen and where she’d landed, so he hoped perhaps Roxana was able to spirit her away before the crush of brawlers spilled into the arena. If not, she was liable to get trampled, as were Tre and Ralph. He didn’t give half a fuck about those meatheads getting their faces stamped into the earth, but he needed to know Scarlett was fine. He could no longer even see Blizzard, or Lizette, or the lethal bottle wielding Heather, who’d undergone some bizarre sort of metamorphosis since her enforced strip-search on the desolate roadside outside Noumena. Now she was a feisty, fearsome femme fatale who would anally k
nife a would-be rapist police officer to death and bring a bottle to battle with every intention of using it to inflict maximum damage.
Maybe fraternising with the likes of Tempest was rubbing off on her. He’d sure rubbed off in her, Seth thought ridiculously, almost capsizing himself in a fit of inane hysterical laughter.
Keep it together, he advised himself, before he tipped over the brink into sheer mindlessness. Seeing what became of Scarlett was most imperative, and maybe finding his way back up onstage to ensure his friends weren’t too mangled was an option too.
What was more, he needed to vacate this perilous position crouched here at the foot of the stage front, before the slew of fighting fools forgot that one of the original victims was still hunkered down there and caused him some accidental harm in their frenetic efforts to mete out their own brands of justice.
He started to stand, probably a fraction too quick. There was an immediate headspin, his equilibrium revolving erratically, and he promptly went back down on his ass, still unbelievably clinging to Mother North as if she was the only thing to keep him anchored. With the weaponry encased in guitar, he sat temporarily dazed on the ground, waiting to get bearings back, vowing to remain standing the next time he underwent that challenge.
Around him blood splattered and dug-up little bits of earthen remnants flew, meaty sounds of flesh and bone being struck issued, shouted curses and other unintelligible gibberish resounded, cut through with the infrequent scream, voices trying to instil authority and order. There were sounds of breaking glass, thumps against wood, crashing noises, a ghastly soundtrack of fighting fury.
