“Really?” Paul looked unimpressed but he tried not to let it bother him. “Because I was protecting the camp?”
“Some of our grieving people need some closure, and I promised to give them that closure. I always keep my word, Paul.”
“And that involves killing me, right?”
“Yes it does.”
“And if I refuse to go with you?”
“Doesn't matter if you refuse or not, it's not up to you, cunt. Your ... friends,” Drake began to chuckle, “are giving you up.”
“I see.” Paul looked hurt and swallowed hard.
“Ah, don't be like that.” Drake patted Paul's shoulder mockingly. “It was either that or we kill every cunt in the street, pretty much. I didn't give them much of a choice. So you'd die anyway.”
“So what're you going to do?” sighed Paul. “Kill me in front of these grieving people you're talking about?”
“It's what they want.” Drake lost his smile and adopted a more serious face before adding, “Don't get me wrong, I rule that place, and I rule it with an iron fist, but if I have half a dozen people who want revenge and I can't give it to them ... well, it makes me look kinda weak, don't you agree? And I'd also lose respect. Things like that can start an uprising.”
“Fine,” Paul had a look of defeat on his face, “I'll go, no hassle.”
Drake pulled a face and thinned his lips, like DeNiro used to in his mob films, and was impressed with Paul's behaviour and said, “If you're willing to go, then we'll make your journey as comfortable as possible. Just don't start anything.”
Paul said softly. “What's the point? It's either me, or all of us, and I certainly don't want anything to happen to Karen, Joanne, Pickle and Vince. There's also a nice family that live here, with two kids.”
“Right, cunt!” Drake said loudly, making Karen jump, and clapped his hands. “Ready when you are.”
“Let me say goodbye first.”
Drake groaned and reluctantly agreed. “Okay.”
Paul nodded at Drake and turned to his three friends, Pickle, Karen and Vince.
Karen said tearfully, “You wanna say goodbye to Joanne?”
“Better not.” Paul winked and added, “Don't want her to cause a scene. Better make this quick, cos she's watching.”
Karen smiled. “I bet the whole street is watching.”
Paul smiled thinly and looked at the three of them.
Vince was the first to step forward and give Paul a hug. He said in his ear. “I'm sorry, buddy.”
“This is breaking my heart,” Drake snickered. “Hurry this shit up.” He then turned to his driver and began to converse with him whilst Paul said his farewells.
Paul broke away and said, “Don't be. You had no option.”
Paul then turned to Pickle and gave him a quick hug. Both men broke away and Pickle placed both hands on Paul's shoulders and stared at him with teary eyes. “God be with you.”
“It's okay, Pickle.” Paul released a sad breath out. “It's not your fault.”
Paul turned to Karen and could see that tears had already fallen. He smiled at the pretty young woman and said, “You know what we haven't had for a while?”
“No. What?”
“A cuddle. On the bed.”
“Like the Sandy Lane days.” She laughed, wiped her eyes and gave him a hug. She placed her hands in his back pockets and whispered something in his ear. Paul nodded and understood what she meant. They broke from each other and Karen wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands.
Paul turned and could see that Drake was still talking to the driver, Mac. Paul cleared his throat to get his attention, making Drake stop in mid-sentence and turn to see that Paul was ready to go.
“Ready then? Good.” Drake pointed at Mac and said, “Show this cunt to the back of the car. I wanna get back before it gets dark.”
Mac stepped over to Paul and grabbed him by the arm, but an incensed Paul shrugged the man off. “I can walk to a fucking car without a guide, you know.”
“Come on.” Mac tried to grab Paul again, but this time Dickson pushed Mac away with both hands.
“Fuck off!” Paul snapped.
Mac, clearly embarrassed, ignored the chuckling from the two men behind him, and went over to Paul with his fists clenched.
Mac grabbed Paul by the throat; Paul held onto Mac's jacket and both men fell and began to roll around on the floor.
Drake could see that Paul's three friends were unsure whether to step in or not and said to them, “Leave it. They're adults.”
They watched on as the men continued to roll along the floor, throwing weak punches at one another. Mac was now on top of Paul and threw another punch in Paul's face. Paul jabbed Mac in the jaw, then grabbed his head with two hands and pulled Mac down to his face.
Mac produced a loud shriek, and he quickly got off of Paul whilst holding his nose that was pissing out blood.
“He bit my nose off!” Mac screamed. “He bit my fucking nose off!”
Drake grabbed Mac and pulled him back and watched as Paul stood to his feet. His mouth and chin were covered in blood and he turned and spat to the floor, revealing the tip of Mac's nose that he had bitten off. It was only half an inch, but it was enough to make a hard man like Mac scream in agony.
Drake turned to the two men who had travelled in the back of the Audi and told them to tie Paul up and put him in the back, as he couldn’t be trusted now. They did as they were told and the man called John tied up Paul and drenched his face with water before throwing him in the back.
“Apologies,” Drake turned to Pickle, Vince and Karen, “but I can't trust the cunt anymore. You understand, don't you?”
Neither one of them answered him.
Joanne came running out of her house and demanded to know what was going on.
“Get back inside,” Pickle said to her, but she ignored him. Vince held her back, told her that Paul was going away for a while and said that he would tell her what was going on once Drake had left.
Joanne reluctantly went back inside, leaving Vince, Pickle, Karen, Drake and a bleeding Mac in the middle of the street. Paul was in the back of the vehicle, sitting inbetween the two WOE men.
“Mac, come here,” Drake beckoned him over.
Holding his nose and groaning in pain, Mac shuffled the five yards over to Drake and had his head lowered, like a dog that had just been told off by its master.
Drake and Mac were now facing the other three and Drake had his arm around the bleeding gang member. “Remember the talk we had before coming here?”
Mac nodded and now had some material on his nose that he had taken out of his pocket, trying to soak up the blood.
“And what did I say?”
“Show restraint unless...”
“Unless what?”
“You say otherwise.” Mac tried to explain himself, “But Drake ... he bit my nose, man.”
“Yes, but you made the first move, didn't you? You didn't need to grab him. He was going willingly anyway.”
“But you said take him into the car.”
“No, I said, show this cunt to the back of the car. I didn't say anything about man-handling the guy. Then the pair of you cunts roll around the floor like a couple of schoolboys, embarrassing the hell out of me. By the way, that has to be the worst fight I've ever seen.”
Mac lowered his head and told Drake that he was sorry. Drake thinned his lips and nodded, giving Mac the impression that be had been forgiven.
“How's it looking?” Drake asked Mac, gesturing towards his injured nose.
Mac turned to Drake and slowly removed the material and showed him the bloody deformed nose.
“Looks like a sore one.” Drake took a step forward to get a better look.
“It is,” Mac whined.
“As soon as we get you back, we'll get the doc to look you over.”
Pickle, Vince and Karen glanced at one another and were all thinking the same thing: They have a doctor?
; Mac placed the material over his bleeding nose, but it had bled that much that the material was soaked. Mac told Drake that he needed some more material to stop the bleeding, and Drake seemed to agree with him.
Drake said, “I've got something for it.”
Mac produced a thin smile. “What?”
Drake then palmed Mac at the wounded area and the injured man fell to the floor, screaming and writhing.
Drake took a step back and kicked Mac at the side of his head, then booted him once more, this time at the top of his skull. Mac groaned as he received another kick, and by 'kick number five' he had stopped moving and making sounds.
Pickle, Karen and Vince watched on in horror as Drake continued to kick a lifeless Mac, and only stopped once he was beginning to get tired. His last strike was to bring the heel of his boot on the back of Mac's head and then Drake was finished.
Mac had taken sixteen blows to the head altogether. He had been kicked to death.
Drake bent down, panting, and wiped the blood that was on the palm of his hand, on Mac's shirt. He then stood up straight and gazed at Pickle whilst trying to get his breath back. Seconds passed and Drake apologised for 'the mess'.
“We'll take him away,” he said. “I'll need three men to enter the street. Two to take him away and I'll now need another driver.”
“Yer asking me for permission?” Pickle was astounded that one minute Drake was kicking a man to death, his own man, and the next he was being polite again.
“Yes, I am.”
Pickle nodded and gestured to Vince to open the steel slide gate. Vince walked over and once it was opened, three men got out of one of the pickup trucks and entered the street without Drake having to say anything.
Two men grabbed Mac's body and dragged it away from Colwyn Place. They placed the body into the back of a pickup, and the remaining man walked around to the driver's side of the Audi and sat down inside, waiting for Drake.
“Guys,” Drake said. “It's been a pleasure.” He looked down at a patch of blood where Mac once lay and added, “Once again, sorry for the mess.”
Drake turned around and walked towards the Audi and got into the front passenger side. Vince was still by the gate, waiting for Drake to leave so he could close it. The car started up, did a three-point turn, and then slowly left the street. It turned right onto the Wolseley Road and the four pickups and ten mopeds eventually followed the car.
Vince slowly closed the gate and looked over to Pickle and Karen. Both were standing still, in silence, unsure what to do.
Paul was gone and he was never coming back.
Chapter Forty Five
Once Drake's vehicles had left, the first person to leave their home was Stephen Rowley. Terry Braithwaite stepped out of 1 Colwyn Place, then Joanne Hammett returned to the street and Stephen Bonser. In a matter of minutes they were all out, except Jim Danson's wife and his two kids, and all slowly approached Pickle, Vince and Karen and created a semi-circle around them.
It was clear they wanted answers, but no words had been said yet.
Before a query was fired at the three of them, Pickle cleared his throat and decided to speak up. Pickle and Vince had their heads up and were looking at the small crowd, but Karen had hers lowered and was clearly unhappy.
“Paul's gone,” Pickle said.
“What do you mean?” Rowley spoke up.
“A lot of Drake's men were killed by Paul. Those men had families back at their base in Stafford, and they want some kind of justice.”
“And what about our revenge for the ones we lost?” Bonser spoke up and added, “Paul's heroics saved the rest of us from being butchered. Don't these idiots know that a toddler was killed?”
Pickle gulped. “I don't really know what to say.”
“So you just let them take him away?”
“Didn't really have a choice in the matter,” Branston sighed and said with his teeth clenched together. “Drake gave us two choices: We either give Paul up, or the street was going to get attacked again and Paul dies anyway, which means we all die, more or less.”
Terry said, “I suppose it wasn't much of a choice.”
Pickle shook his head. “It wasn't. There was only one option to make, but even then it was difficult to see him go.”
“So what happens now, chap?” Rowley twisted his neck and loudly cleared his throat. “What happens if they come back and—?”
“As far as Drake is concerned, it's finished. He more or less gave us his word.”
“And you believe that?”
“I have to. We have to.”
“What if he goes back on his word?”
“We're gonna have to trust him. Nothing else we can do. We can't live in fear. The good thing is that they have a lot o' supplies back at their place, so robbing us never even crossed their minds.” Pickle wasn't sure that what he was saying was entirely true, but the people needed some kind of positive comments. There were going to be a lot of people that wouldn't be sleeping tonight.
“What's going to happen to Paul?” Joanne shook with nerves as she asked the question.
Karen kept her head down when she said, “What do you think?”
A hush fell on the group and was soon shattered when Stephen Rowley spoke. He said, “We need more people, weapons, better security.”
“True.” Pickle agreed with Rowley's suggestion. “But in order to get that, we need fuel, and we're running short. Thankfully, Elza, Ophelia and Stephanie came back with some fuel, and that is an absolute lifesaver. There is the option o' a couple o' us goin' out there on foot, to see if we can return with anything, but the numbers in this street are low enough as it is. Let's try and live in peace and get through the winter, then we'll decide what to do to improve the camp.”
“Live in peace?” Bonser scoffed. “Get through the winter? You want us to live in peace for the next five or six months and get through the winter? You think we're not gonna have another incident between now and January?”
“I'm trying to be positive,” sighed Pickle.
“You know better than most people that something will happen,” Rowley said with a shake of the head. “Some crisis will pop up, whether it's tomorrow or next week.”
“Okay, what the fuck do yer want me to say!” Pickle's yell made half of the people jump in fright, including Karen who was next to him, and Rowley gulped and took a small step back. “Eh? What do yer want, Rowley? The fucking truth? Okay, here we go!” Pickle looked at the frightened faces of the residents and growled, “Are yer listening? Good! Yer all gonna die! Whether it's the dead, Drake, or some other group o' bandits that we'll no doubt come across, and we will come across more people, we are all eventually going to die.”
Karen tried to step in and calm the man down, but he told her to shut up and continued.
He said, “You think it's bad now, but in six months or a year from now, survivors won't have any medical supplies at all, food and water, maybe, if we grow our own. A lot o' people out there are starving to death or are gonna starve to death.” Pickle snickered gently at the shocked faces and pointed at the crowd. “If yer lucky, yer might go the way John Lincoln did, nice and quick, but for most o' us it's not gonna be pretty. It could be cancer and there'd be nothing we could do, unless you ask us to put you out o' yer misery. It could be something simple like appendicitis. Or yer could be killed by the dead, which is not a great way to go either. So from now on ... we just carry on.”
“So now what?” Bonser sighed and was the first person brave enough to speak up. “You've given Paul a death sentence and we all carry on living as normal, is that what you're saying?”
“Given Paul a death sentence?” Pickle laughed, but there was anger behind that laugh which they all could see. “Stephen, yer didn't even like him, and now yer moaning that we've let him go. Yer and James made his life a misery when he was first here. I've said this once and I'll say it again: I had no choice. I sacrificed Paul to save yer lot. Me, Karen and Vince have known Paul a lot l
onger than yer guys, and it was a tough fucking call to make. Even he understood the decision.”
Terry Braithwaite grunted, stroked his ginger beard and said, “What's done is done. I'm sorry Paul has gone and ... well ... is going to be put to death, but it is what it is. I know it sounds strange, but Paul dying has saved the rest of us. You saw how he reacted. He went in peace and didn't need to be forced into the car. Maybe he wants to be reunited with his family. I know I have thought about dying since losing my family. Let's stop bickering, and remember ... Paul went in peace.”
“He went in peace?” Vince cackled. “Apart from biting that guy's nose off.”
“I have to admit, I did fear for the camp when he did that,” Rowley spoke up and tried to make a joke. “But if you're gonna go, chap, best to go out with a bang.”
“You said that the relatives of the people that Paul had killed wants vengeance.” Terry paused and was unsure whether his query was going to be appropriate. “How will they do that?”
Pickle asked, “What do yer mean?”
“Well, do you think they'll execute him quickly or ... I dunno ... take him somewhere and beat him to death?”
Joanne began to cry on hearing this and Terry immediately apologised for his insensitive query.
“I have no idea.” Pickle hunched his shoulders and threw his arms in the air. “They may want him to suffer for what he did, and I have a feeling that it's going to be watched by the relatives of the deceased, whether it's a slow beating, a bullet to the back of his head, or a hanging.”
Pickle could feel his throat getting tighter and began to think of what Paul had been through. And now to end his life like this! It seemed too cruel.
He looked at Joanne. She was crying, which was understandable. Her and Paul had grown close over the few weeks he had been at Colwyn Place. Pickle then looked at Karen and could see that she was grinding her teeth and her eyes looked wet.
“You okay?” he asked her.
She nodded.
“Yer don't have to hold back, you know, if yer feel the need to cry.”
Snatchers (Book 11): The Dead Don't Knock Page 22
