"Come here, big chap." Paul put his arm around his boy and kissed him on the cheek.
"I'm scared, daddy."
"I know, son. Me too."
Chapter Thirty Eight
As soon as an hysterical Jasmine Kelly had reached the barrier and explained to Pickle and the other two guards what was happening, they immediately left their posts and told Jasmine to stay put.
Pickle and the two other guards ran to the back of the camp as fast as their legs would carry them. Already, their ears were assaulted by male and female screams, and as they ran past caravans they could see that some people were getting out. Pickle thought that this was just inquisitiveness to see what the screaming was all about, but it was costing peoples' lives. This was evident when he saw that three ghouls were on the floor, tearing young Gareth Mason to pieces. The twenty-two-year-old shrieked at his indescribable pain, while they tore and bit into his chest, but everyone knew that he was finished.
Pickle drew his machete back and hacked at one of them that was eating Gareth. The other guards were carrying guns and used the butts of their guns to smash the other two.
Pickle gave Gareth a sympathetic look. He was a mess, lying on his back and had been bitten on numerous occasions on his chest, including having his left cheek ripped open.
He was fucked. Pickle knew that, and Gareth knew that.
He was still breathing, but he didn't have long to go. If any more beasts didn't get him, the infection was going to kill him anyway.
"Hold tight, buddy." Pickle bent down, aware that other people needed his help. "We need to see if the others are okay."
"Behind you!" one of the guards yelled.
The other turned around and fired a shot at two that were progressing towards them. The guard that pulled the trigger was a man called Geoff. He was a nervous guy at the best of times, but tonight his hands shook more than ever. The nearest creature took a hit in its stomach, and Pickle yelled, "Aim for the head! Jesus, you should know that by now!"
The other guard, Colin, fired another shot, and the three men saw the head explode, its brains decorating the face of the ghoul that was behind him. Pickle took out the other with a swipe to the side of its head.
Vince suddenly appeared with a machete and a shotgun in his hand, and Pickle then saw Karen and Shaz appear ahead of them.
"What's going on?" screamed Karen.
"Get back inside!" Vince and Pickle yelled at the pair of them.
Shaz pulled out a machete and Karen did the same.
One of the guards shrieked, "The Rotters are in the camp!"
Pickle yelled, "Karen, yer need to get back into yer caravan and stay there, right now!"
"Fuck off!" Karen nudged Shaz and saw two advancing ghouls to their left. Shaz rammed her machete upwards through the chin of one of the dead, the tip of the blade sticking through the skull, whereas Karen front-kicked the other. It fell to the floor, like a drunk that had been pushed over, and she hit it twice, making sure it was never getting up again.
Pickle cried, "Jasmine said there was a group o' them!"
"They've dispersed." Shaz responded, "They're everywhere. They could be around every corner of every fucking caravan."
"Behind you!" Karen screamed.
Vince turned around and saw just the one. He nonchalantly rammed his blade into its skull, and put the blade back into his belt as if it was nothing. Vince pointed at the two guards, Colin and Geoff. "Spread out, and tell people to stay in their caravans, unless they've done any guard-duty. We need all the help we can get." He then looked at the dying Gareth Mason, and said sadly, "Somebody take him out."
"There's one on the floor." Shaz pointed at a Snatcher that was lying on its front, underneath a caravan, chewing on something.
Geoff raised his gun to shoot at the thing from ten yards away, but Vince yelled," No!" He was too late.
Vince, Pickle, Shaz, Karen and the two guards were forced back when the caravan exploded. Flames licked the air and all of them had hot faces from the explosion. The heat on their faces was similar to how it felt to be sunburnt, but it was something that was shrugged off. They had more pressing matters to contend with.
"You fucking idiot!" Vince scolded. "There's a gas canister there."
"What the fuck's a canister doing by the side of a caravan?" yelled Pickle.
"When people are running out, we leave a canister outside their place so they can change it first thing in the morning."
Inside they could hear screams, and Vince knew exactly who was inside. It was two elderly ladies in their late seventies. Gina Harrison and May Worthington. They couldn't see anything, but the screams suggested that the two elderly ladies were burning to death.
"We can't help them now," Geoff sobbed, riddled with guilt because it was him pulling the trigger that had caused the two ladies to burn.
Vince grabbed both guards and snarled, "Just go. Tell people to stay inside."
"Head for the back o' the camp," Pickle said to Vince, Shaz and Karen. "It's more open and at least we can't be taken by surprise. With these caravans scattered like this, it's like a maze. These things could be lurking around every corner."
The four of them ran past the burning caravan, with the screams assaulting their ears. The flames still licked the air and were devouring the senior citizens inside, and giving them a slow and horrendous death. The four were now near the hedge, near Jack's grave. The patch of grass was now clear, but they were unaware that this was the area they had come from, through the gaping hole of the hedge that none of them had spotted yet.
"How did they get in?" Vince looked in shock.
"Worry about that later," snapped Pickle. "For now, we need to remove these fucks."
Being at the back of the camp gave the four of them a better view, and with the other two guards now going around and telling people to stay indoors, Vince felt that people would do as they were told and ride this out by hiding away.
Shaz was the first to spot three dead bodies scattered around the grass. The bodies of Trevor Barkley and Henry Bowes were noticed by them all. The third body, in the distance, lay on its back and Pickle told Vince that it was Gail Kelly. Vince quickly wondered how Rosemary was, and the Dicksons, especially Kyle.
He snapped out of his wondering once Pickle pointed. "Four coming our way."
"How many altogether?" asked Karen.
"I have no idea. Jasmine said: at least twenty."
"Fuck."
"Try and stick together." Pickle and co pulled out the blades and took a run at the four Snatchers. All fell, almost simultaneously as they were struck, and another two appeared from behind a caravan. Vince decided to use his shotgun.
"Don't!" Shaz yelled. "They're attracted to the noise."
"Shoot at the cocksuckers!" screamed Karen. "If they head towards us, then that'll be better for the others."
David Chatting had now appeared to the side of them, holding a shotgun and was firing at a stray one that advanced towards him. Vince told the three to stand back and pulled the trigger twice at the two advancing deadheads. Both went down in a bloody mess, but there were more appearing. Vince yelled over to David, "Get into the camp and kill any strays lurking around. We'll deal with these."
David gave Vince the thumbs up and disappeared.
More came. This time there was eleven, shambling to the back of the camp, towards the four. Two of the dead were on fire, and Pickle assumed that they had walked past the burning caravan.
"If we get out o' this," Pickle grabbed Karen, shouting over the groans from the dead in front of them and the screams in the background. "Yer gonna get grounded for a week. "
"You're not my dad. You don't tell me what to do."
"Yer pregnant."
"I can't hide in my caravan while this is going on. It's not me. Why are you always on at me?"
"Because I love yer, yer stupid girl."
Karen's eyes watered and said, "You've never said that before."
Vince nodded
over to the group of the dead that were ten yards away and advancing, and said, "Er, guys. Let's do the soppy shite later. We've got some skulls to crack."
Chapter Thirty Nine
Attacking the horde had proved difficult. The eleven that advanced towards them had suddenly turned into eighteen, and Pickle had only put one of them down. His second victim took a swipe to the face, then lunged at him, taking Harry Branston completely by surprise.
As his other friends struggled against the dead that had now surrounded the group, Pickle had his attacker by the hair, keeping it at arm's length, while desperately swiping at others that were gaining. Pickle then stabbed at the creature through the eye that he had by the hair. He gave his blade a twist, pulled it out, then let the fiend drop to the floor.
The group were close together and Vince and Shaz kept on kicking them back, trying to give themselves valuable seconds. Shaz was aware that a few weeks ago, this was the very same technique that had almost ended her life, when her foot had gone straight through the torso of a diseased creature. She had fallen and was surrounded, but Jack Slade saved her life, taking a bite to his tricep for his troubles.
Karen was already exhausted, and rammed her blade through a creature's neck, missing its head, then kicked it away while dozens of rotten hands reached out for her and her friends. There was over a dozen of the dead, but it looked like there was a sea of them, and it seemed difficult to put them down because some were so close and hard to strike properly.
The situation reminded Karen of the Stile Cop scenario, but there was no steep hill to go down for an escape. All that was behind them was an eight-foot hedge, which their backs were now pressed up against. Pickle released an aggressive snarl, trying to rally the troops, trying to increase the adrenaline and gain more energy from somewhere, and screamed, "Come on! Let's fuckin' have 'em!"
He manically hacked and swiped, his face getting decorated with diseased blood, but then an engine sound could be heard in front of them, but nobody could understand what it was. As the seconds dragged by, the tired group could see that some of the dead were moving away. The crowd were dispersing and following the noise that was coming from twenty yards away at the right hand side of the hedge.
After killing some, the four tired individuals had just the five to contend with while the others walked towards the noise. Pickle was astonished. There were four potential meals on show, yet some were distracted quite easily from a strident sound in another direction. It just proved that these things were unpredictable and hard to work out.
Karen, Shaz and Vince took out another one each, whereas Pickle had two to sort out. He swung his bloody blade, but it slipped out of his hand, almost hitting Vince in the face. The two ghouls grabbed him by the shoulders, but Pickle grabbed both deceased males by their hair and smashed their heads together five times—the fifth was the lethal blow that finished them off and smashed the front of their heads to bloody bits. He released their hair and they fell to the floor.
Pickle wiped his hands on his shirt, and walked over to pick up his machete, breathing heavily. Ignoring the hideous smell of death that was around them, the exhausted four tried to get their breath back. Karen turned to the side and began to throw up.
"Okay?" was Vince's short query to the twenty-three-year-old.
"I'm fine." Karen smiled thinly, genuinely touched by his concern.
They looked over at the backs of the dead that were walking away from them, and Vince could see where the noise was now coming from. "Shit. It's Robin." Vince and the rest realised what the noise was now. It was the chainsaw they had stolen from the garden centre.
Karen asked no one in particular, "What the fuck's he doing? Has he lost his mind?"
"He's enticing them away," Shaz said. "He's helping us...helping the camp, drawing them out towards him."
The gang of Snatchers had their backs to the group. There was three nearer to Robin, leaving the others yards behind. The four of them all nodded to one another, and ran over and began taking some out with the last of their energy to help Robin out. They eventually fell, while the three near Robin were inches away from getting the chainsaw treatment.
Robin Barton was up against the hedge and rammed the 4.5kg chainsaw into the face of the first advancing beast which decorated his clothes, face and white hair with dark blood. The other two went for him, quicker than he had anticipated, and both received wounds to their hands as the chainsaw travelled through their dead skin and bone.
Robin saw that Pickle, Shaz, Vince and Karen had finished with their slayings and were heading over to help him out. Robin knew that time wasn't on his side, and tried to remove the device from one of the creature's arms so he could go for their heads. Both beasts moved forwards and Robin screamed out as the beasts, as well as the chainsaw, fell on top of him as he fell to the ground. The chainsaw was sandwiched inbetween Robin and the two things. By the time Pickle and Vince had reached him—they were the quickest of the four—Robin was already screaming, the moving blade was slowly embedding itself into his face and forehead, spurting out warm crimson liquid.
Robin had stopped screaming, and Pickle and Vince had grabbed both creatures off of Robin. Vince rammed his blade through its skull, whereas Pickle brought down the heel of his boot onto the other one.
"Fuck," muttered Vince. He leaned over and turned off the chainsaw and saw that the thing was about four inches into Robin's head and face. Shaz took a peek and saw the grisly sight of poor Robin Barton. His demise was similar to an old seventies slasher movie she had seen years ago. It didn't seem real.
"He saved us." Vince looked at the other three. There was sadness in his voice. "I know he was a pain in the arse, but he saved us. I'm not sure we could have handled the others face-to-face. If we had died..."
"The rest o' the camp could have struggled," Pickle said in a trance-like state.
"In the old world he was a decent bloke." Vince bent down and took the chainsaw off of Robin's body, and dumped it next to him on the grass. Removing this had revealed a red bloody line from the top of his head down to his chin.
"Why did he do it?" Vince was flabbergasted at Robin's sacrifice. It wasn't really in his character. Robin was quite selfish, and in the past had even hinted that Vince's leadership role was under threat and that he was a likely successor.
"It's hard to tell what psychological scars people have received over the last five weeks or so," Karen philosophically spoke.
Despite his run-in with Robin, Pickle was thankful to the dead man and whispered a prayer for him, then said aloud, "May God rest his soul."
"I think that might be most of them," said Shaz. She was almost doubled over, still panting hard.
"True." Nodded Vince and cleared his throat. "But I think there're probably a few more scattered around somewhere."
"Let's get in there, now that we've drastically reduced the numbers." Pickle pointed at the caravans that were scattered across the land. "Remember. Every corner is a potential hazard."
"It's not over yet." Vince said with what little breath he had. He looked up to the murky sky, then saw the caravans, one still burning and spewing out thick smoke into the atmosphere. He walked forwards, back into the caravan area, his other three colleagues behind him. "Be on your guard."
Chapter Forty
Pickle, Karen, Vince and Shaz crept by each caravan, one-by-one, but there was no sign of any Snatchers, and even the screaming had ceased. It appeared that people had adhered to the two guards, that Vince had sent away, that were telling people to remain indoors. He had no idea where they were now, hopefully they had taken care of the remaining ones that lurked around the corners.
A set of footsteps was heard to the side of them; a figure appeared and quickly aimed a shotgun in their direction. It was David Chatting.
"Don't shoot!" all four screamed.
"Shit." Chatting lowered the gun and was physically shaking. He said, "Are you guys okay?"
Vince sighed, "We're okay...just."
<
br /> "Have you seen any more?" asked Karen, her head turning from side-to-side, paranoid of any surprises.
David shook his head. He looked browbeaten and he had an appearance to suggest that he was about to burst into tears. "I got another one a few minutes ago, but I haven't seen any more."
"I had two guards with me," Vince announced, "Geoff and—"
"I saw them a few minutes ago." David wiped his eyes with his forearm and choked back the tears. "Vince, the barrier's unattended."
"That's not important now. We need to make sure people are safe and these things are gone. I can already see one from here," Vince proclaimed. He lifted his machete up and used it to point at a lone Rotter. "There. Two caravans down. By Rosemary's place."
"Isn't that where that little girl, Lisa, is staying?" Shaz asked.
Nobody gave her an answer, and Vince told David Chatting to continue searching, especially under the caravans. He then asked Pickle to go with him as he headed for the single ghoul in case there were more, while Shaz and Karen were distracted by the distressed cries of a male.
"Go and see what it is," Vince said to the girls, referring to the male cries. "We'll see you in a bit."
While Pickle and Vince left Karen and Shaz, both girls followed the cries. Still aware that every corner was a potential hazard, they finally reached a place opposite Karen and Shaz's own caravan. It was John Waite's residence. His door was open and the cries seemed muffled, as if he had locked himself in a back room or something.
Karen was in front of Shaz and was the first to step inside to see what was happening. There was one Snatcher inside John Waite's caravan, meandering around the kitchen area. Its back was to Karen and wasn't aware of her presence. Karen had worked out that John had locked himself in the toilet that was next to the kitchen. She had no idea why his main door was open or how one of those things managed to climb up the three steps to go through it. Karen thought that maybe it had crawled in. It was only three steps.
Snatchers: Volume Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 4-6) Page 68
