The wind continue to blow, and whistled into Jamie's ears and teased him to the point that its teasing was getting beyond annoying, and this was the downfall to being at the highest point of the area. His nose twitched as the awful smell grew stronger and assaulted Jamie's snout; it was so bad now that it was making him feel sick.
Suddenly, he released a frightened gasp as a pair of icy hands grabbed the back of his neck, and he could feel his frame being dragged by a strong presence to the floor. Jamie tried to turn around and he could smell and hear the groaning of one of the creatures, as it was centimetres away from his face.
It was a surreal few seconds, but the surreal moment had evaporated once he felt the first bite into his shoulder. The pain brought him back to an unwanted reality. He released a composed shriek as the wound began to smart almost immediately. He, at last, managed to fight the strong ambusher off, and he ran a few yards before collapsing to the sandy floor, dropping his gun.
The pain in his shoulder was of something he had never experienced in all his days. He remained sitting on the floor, his hand hopelessly covering his wound. The thing was ten yards away from him and staggered towards him with little effort to speed up, almost as if it knew its prey was defunct anyway.
Jamie was finding it increasingly difficult to control his breathing, and his eyes widened to the shape of golf balls as he saw silhouettes of more of them slowly scrambling out of the woods. At first he thought that his tired eyes and the dark was playing tricks on him, and when he stared into the woods, he thought that the trees were slowly dancing and moving towards him.
It had now turned out that there was an army of the things, and it looked like to his eyes that the woods had come alive. He had no time to count them, but he estimated that there was at least thirty of them, and God knows how many were following behind, making their way up. Jamie could feel the scream of fear lodged in his throat, but found it impossible to release it.
Why now did they choose to come through in their hundreds? What attracted them? Jamie wondered. Was it KP's shooting from earlier? Did one hear the sound and make its way up, while dozens followed? Or was it Isobel's screaming? Was it something else that had attracted their attention to walk up Stile Cop?
The original being that had attacked him, shambled forwards towards him and it almost looked like that this creature, who in human form looked like a male in its twenties, was responsible for leading the rest into the woods and further up.
Jamie placed his hand on the floor to lift himself back up and felt the stinging pain shoot through his arm. He managed to let out a scream of fright, and this caused the remaining four individuals in the van to jump out of the back.
"Jamie!" Janine screamed. "Oh God, Jamie!"
She ran towards him, forcing Pickle to run after her. She felt two strong hands grab each of her shoulders, which pressed down and stopped her in her tracks; she then twisted herself around to face Pickle.
"Get off me," she yelled, and slapped him across the face. "I can't leave him there."
Unruffled by Janine's slap, Pickle pleaded, "If you have to go, then take this. Don't shoot until I say!"
He handed Janine her Browning, and he raised his shotgun. KP came out running behind and could see the small army appearing in numbers out from the trees; a sound coming from behind him forced his head to turn around as he heard the van being pounded by a hundred fists.
"They're everywhere!" KP exclaimed. "They're not just in the woods. They're at the entrance, banging on the side of the van trying to find a way in. Quick, let's all get back in the van, Jamie's fucked."
"I'm not leaving him!" Janine screamed.
"We're gonna have to leave." Karen was the last to emerge from the van, holding a handgun, and without hesitating, she ran up to Jamie's attacker and from ten yards away she squeezed the trigger once. This had been the first time she had fired the pistol and she had not an ounce of hesitation in her. Jamie's attacker fell to the floor.
"For Christ’s sake!" Pickle yelled over the dozens of moans from the dead, and glared at Karen with demonic eyes. "Why don't yer set off a flare and let them all know where we are?"
"Too late for that," Karen sniped back, and nodded to the woods, to see dozens upon dozens still spilling out of the darkness onto the sandy area.
Janine ran over to Jamie to pick him up, not caring that a swarm of them were literally yards away from her. It was a struggle, and as she managed to eventually get him up, she used her left hand to throw her own Browning to the feet of Karen and she shouted, "Cover me!"
Karen and KP released slugs from their pistols and saw heads exploding, before hitting the floor with a deathly thump. Pickle's shotgun was causing the most damage; sometimes two went down as the cartridge hit them, producing a domino effect of exploding heads occurring in a straight pattern.
Karen had used up her magazine, and instead of reloading, she put the empty gun into her trouser side pocket, and began using Janine's. Two more shots were fired from the gun, and two more heads at close range burst open, spilling black gunk onto the floor as they continued to fall, but they were all aware that there were too many of them.
Karen saw the bodies circling them, and stated the obvious. "We've gotta go! Now!" She then looked over to see that it was impossible to get to the van with the amount of bodies on the beauty spot.
Janine let out a shriek as three of them grabbed her.
She was pulled to the floor, but she held onto Jamie. She had already been bit in her left tricep and now she felt the side of her stomach being bit into several times, as they crowded around the two officers, circling them. The creatures were not just standing and crouching over her and Jamie, some were lying on their chests and crawling through the crowd to get a better chance of getting at the two delicious humans.
Janine looked over to Jamie and he stared into nothingness through shock and had stopped fighting them off. Cold sets of fingers dug into his mouth and ripped his face off in front of her eyes. He didn't scream once.
She felt another bite into her shoulder and her screams of pain and for help were pointless, as one of the things lying on top of her legs opened its decayed mouth and took a huge chunk through her trousers, inbetween her legs.
Karen, KP and Pickle pointed their guns from ten yards away over in Janine and Jamie's direction. For fear of shooting them by accident, neither one squeezed their trigger. They never attempted to help Janine, as they saw her being bit and all three knew that with one bite, she was good as dead.
Instead, the remainder of the group responded by only firing at those who gained on them. They all walked backwards, away from the two officers and were now being circled by at least twenty of them. They continued to carefully aim in order not to waste a single bullet and fired.
The attack of the two officers was a huge distraction as most of the things were attracted to the free lunch, and this gave the remainder of the group valuable seconds of survival. The creatures wasted no time in devouring and ripping off the bloody limbs of the pair of the officers and because they had circled around them, they couldn't be seen, but the horrific screams from Janine were unmistakeable.
KP looked at Karen; the panic scrawled on his face was self-evident. They watched in horror as severed arms and the entrails of both of their short-lived friends, were being devoured by the cannibals, as gaps in the crowd began to appear now, as some of the things began to stand up from the massacre and faced the three survivors, knowing there was other warm flesh on offer.
Karen looked behind her and pointed towards the van, there was many of them on the beauty spot now, and this made getting to the doors of the van a pointless and suicidal exercise.
"Shit!" KP screamed; he had never been so frightened in all his life. "What the fuck are we gonna do now?" He looked behind him down the steep hill that led to acres of bracken. "Let's just run for it!"
"We can't leave the van," Pickle yelled, "We won't last five minutes out there on foot, in the darkness."
"I'll create a diversion," Karen shouted over the moans and groans off the hundred or so things that were almost encircling them.
The three survivors were all now standing on the edge of the beauty spot, behind them was the steep hill covered in healthy bracken—their only way of escape. They could have easily outrun the things, but they didn't want to leave the van, as well as the supplies inside, behind.
Karen began re-loading the other gun. "You and KP go a few yards down the hill, then run across so you're near the van. Once you can see it's clear, get in. I'll go further back to create a diversion. That should get some of them away from the van. Once they get near me, I'm gonna run down the hill and head for the crossroads to the right while you two are getting the thing moving; most of the dopey cocksuckers will just fall anyway trying to chase me. Get the van and meet me at the crossroads at the other end of Stile Cop Road."
KP and Pickle nodded in agreement to her plan, as it wasn't as if they had time to deliberate on it. Karen sidestepped ten yards to the left away from the two men who had now disappeared from view as they ran down the hill. Karen saw that some of them were not falling for this trick as some went over the direction where KP and Pickle had disappeared from, so she began to shout and holler in a desperate attempt to attract their attention.
Once it began to work, she raised both of the loaded Brownings. Her inexperienced hands shook with fear as they got nearer, and with guns cocked, she began squeezing the triggers. Only one bullet was wasted, as she allowed them to get near her before giving them a bullet each to end their miserable lives.
As they gained nearer, she backed a little and moved back from the grotesque-looking things. All around her they dropped to the floor as the bullets made their violent impact; some of them were getting so close, her T-shirt was being soaked as if someone with a wet paintbrush was flicking her with every shot that was taken.
She kept her eyes at a squint, paranoid the blood could get in there, and she could now feel her heels on the edge of the area and she looked over where the van was. The doors to the van looked reasonably clear, making it possible for the two inmates to reappear further along the beauty spot, get in the van and escape without being attacked themselves. It was too dark to see, but Karen thought that they should be near the van by now.
She knew if she stayed a few seconds longer she was going to be snatched and would end up with the same fate as Janine and Jamie. She squeezed the trigger for one last time, and her last victim was so close that the gun was shoved in its mouth when she pulled it. She turned away from the risky shooting so the spray didn't hit her face.
That was the messiest of the lot, and as she turned around to run down the steep hill, she could feel dozens of dead hands desperately grabbing and snatching at her clothes and her hair as she turned to face the hill. The momentum of her fall allowed their grip to be futile, although she lost a handful of hairs from the grabbing. She began to pick up speed down the steep decline; she could feel her legs were not going quick enough for how quick the body wanted her to go, and she fell over to the floor and grazed her palms on the hard dirt, thankfully not losing the pistols that still remained tightly gripped by her hands.
She stood up immediately and looked up at the edge of the beauty spot from the bottom of the hill, and saw the silhouette of body after body clumsily falling over the edge and tumbling after and towards her down the steep hill.
Noticing that the ones that fell first were now staggering to their feet twenty yards away from her presence as the decline was beginning to subside, she picked up the pace once more and was coming to the end of the hill and was now running on a flat surface.
She could just about see the crossroads ahead in the darkness, and wondered where the van was. She turned around and looked up to see the beauty spot from an angle she had never seen before; it looked almost like a mountain.
Again, she wondered where the van was; it was taking its time but when she looked up, she saw the headlights come on; it was finally beginning to move from the Stile Cop area.
They had made it! They were inside! The plan had worked!
Because of the amount of bodies that it was being surrounded by after seeing the inmates climb in, the vehicle was struggling to move as it shunted back and forwards in order to get out onto the main road. Karen needed to get to the crossroads quick, as she was certain that the things that came from the woods, and the things that had made their way up the Stile Cop Road that were initially banging on the van, would more-than-likely follow the van to the crossroads, albeit slowly.
She needed to turn up early. If she turned up late, there would be too many of them, and Pickle and KP could decide that it would be too dangerous to hang around for her.
She ran hard, as the van at last was moving slowly, and made it to the crossroads. Her body was drenched in light from the moving van's headlights in the distance, which made her feel vulnerable as it highlighted her presence.
The vehicle finally began to pick up pace as it progressed on the main road towards her, while it crushed and ran over body after body. As the van got nearer, her frame became even more lit up as the headlights got closer, and she could see in the murky distance, the creatures from the beauty spot area beginning to spill out of the entrance, onto the main road and hurriedly heading to the van.
This didn't unnerve Karen as, van or no van, the things were a fair distance away, and could be outrun. What did bother her was that she couldn't see what was to her right or behind her. She was standing on a crossroads, in the middle of the country where there was no streetlights, and all that surrounded her was woods, darkness, and the headlights of the prison van. The main thing that worried her was that she might be vulnerable from the right as when she fled down the hill, many of them followed her. Sure, they fell down clumsily, but they still eventually got to their feet and were probably stumbling towards her as she stood anxiously waiting, but she couldn't see the things. Not yet.
The van stopped at the crossroads, only yards from Karen who was in front, and KP stuck his head out of the window and fired a shot near the young woman. She quickly turned around as she heard a thump behind her, and because of the light from the van's headlights she saw one of them a metre away from her, lying face down with the contents of its head oozing out from where the bullet penetrated it. It was ten yards behind her. KP had spotted it and had saved her life. Great shot!
Pickle stuck his head out of the driver's side window and calmly said to Karen. "Er, anytime this week, if that's all right with you, Missy."
He pointed behind her; she turned around to see three beings walking down the adjacent road and could now hear the shuffling of many feet coming from her right—most probably the things that pursued her as she descended down the hill.
She pulled out the two Brownings; cocked both of them, and focused on the three behind her and began to release some of the contents of the magazines. She fired eleven bullets and all three of them eventually fell, as the headshots were eventually successful.
"Come on, Lara Croft!" Pickle instructed sharply, with a tinge of sarcasm, but mainly anger. "Yer wasting bullets and time!"
"Move your fuckin' butt, or we're going!" KP urged. "There're hundreds behind us, about thirty seconds away."
She stuck the guns into her belt and ran to the already-opened passenger side of the van and went to jump in. Suddenly, from out of the darkness, she felt a pair of cold hands grab her arms, making it impossible to draw her guns, and she let out a frightened shriek.
She stared into the black lifeless eyes of the bloated female being, and saw that there were many not far behind her from the right road. She struggled to reach for her guns stuck in her belt and KP decided to save her life for a second time and pointed his gun and squeezed the trigger, but his magazine was empty.
Karen managed to release one of her arms and threw her elbow forwards into the face of the beast and was told by Pickle to 'get the fuck out of the way.'
She
ducked and lay on the road, while simultaneously KP hit the floor by the passenger seat, which was followed by Pickle releasing another cartridge from his Browning shotgun from the driver's seat. The head of Karen's attacker exploded, decorating some of the passenger door, that was opened, with dark blood and brain matter. KP got back up off the van's floor, his ears smarting, and Karen didn't need a second invitation. She jumped inside, closed the passenger door and wound the passenger window fully up.
"Don't ever fuckin' do that again. That was a waste of a cartridge," Pickle pointed out, and then changed the tone in his voice immediately to a more softer manner. "Are yer okay? You bit?"
Karen shook her head.
"Yer sure yer never shot a gun before?" Pickle looked at Karen with sceptical eyes.
"Of course," she sniffed.
"Yer didn't even hesitate," Pickle said. "I'll give you credit for that, although yer nearly wasted a full magazine on three o' them."
"It's not as if I'm shooting actual people, is it?" Karen shrugged, although underneath she was a nervous wreck, and KP could see through her fake bravado. After all, she was still a nurse.
Their temporary break had allowed a lot of the beings to catch up to the van and Pickle slipped the van into first, ready to get the van moving again, and could feel the van rocking from side to side. He thrashed the gas. Jesus, there must be at least a hundred of the things around us from all angles.
It took a while, but the van eventually got moving, crushing anything that dared to go in front. The van jumbled around as ten bodies felt the weight of the van. Some of the things had limbs crushed and didn't show any signs of pain on their emotionless face. Two bodies were almost halved in two as the wheels went over their torso, their rotten guts spewing out onto the tarmac, and another two heads popped like champagne bottles, smearing the tarmac with the contents of what used to be inside their diseased craniums.
Once ahead seemed clear, the van began to pick up momentum. Pickle checked the offside mirror and saw the army of the dead, slowly but surely, disappearing as the van progressed straight ahead at the crossroads.
Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3) Page 32
