Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3)

by Shaun Whittington

  Chapter Thirty Two

  June 19th

  It was 10am, Tuesday, and the breakfast went down well, but Pickle felt that at any minute, if he didn't get back to bed, the contents in his stomach would not dwell there for long. The nauseous feeling was reoccurring and he began to ponderously walk towards the bathroom, still fully-clothed from the night before. He tried the door and released an expletive once he found it was locked. The door suddenly opened and there stood a man, dressed in only his briefs. He had numerous tattoos and looked in reasonable shape, aside from a few extra pounds around his middle.

  "You must be the Harry that Karen has mentioned." He held out his hand. "You look better than the last time I saw you. You never spoke to me; I assumed I was intruding or something."

  "I was just feeling a little under the weather."

  "And now?"

  "I feel okay now." Pickle eventually shook Jones' hand; he was still feeling weak. "You must be Billy the Kid."

  He released a nasal chortle. "Oh, that. Yeah, sorry about that. A rush of blood to the head." George Jones then cocked his head to the side and his eyes tried to re-focus on Pickle's frame. "Say, haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

  Pickle ignored him, as he was in no mood for small talk. He couldn't wait any longer and drained his bladder, as the bathroom door remained open. He could still feel George standing on the landing. What did he want?

  "Pickle!" Karen exclaimed, running up the stairs. "You ready to face the world again?" Pickle flushed the toilet and now all three were standing at the top of the stairs.

  He shook his head. "Another few hours; just need this nauseous feeling to pass."

  George squinted his eyes. "Pickle? I know that name."

  "Just a nickname," Karen said coldly. She was obviously still angry after he had borrowed her gun and had fired it unnecessarily, but she was also angry with herself for leaving it.

  She grabbed Pickle's arm and tried to escort him back to his bedroom. Pickle turned around to see George walking back into the next bedroom; he noticed a huge tribal tattoo on his back, something he couldn't make out, and the initials J and B on each shoulder blade. Pickle had seen it before somewhere. He belched and kept his mouth closed for fear of releasing the toxic vapours in Karen's direction.

  Karen shut the door behind her and confessed to Pickle in a whisper, "I don't like him."

  "Well, that's plainly obvious."

  "D'ya think you'll be fit in a few hours?"

  "Defo," Pickle replied with assurance. "Once this nausea has passed, I'll be swinging from the chandeliers o' this fine establishment." He looked at Karen and could see a rare fear in her eyes. "Somethin' wrong?"

  "Nah," she replied unconvincingly. "Just can't wait to get shot of him."

  "Well, once I'm up in a few hours, we'll ask him to leave together. He's hardly gonna say no, is he?" He nodded to Karen's pistol sticking out of her dark blue jeans, and then nodded under the bed where his beloved shotgun slept. Karen was supposed to have hidden it in the cupboard, but had never got round to it.

  "S'pose not," she mumbled.

  "What's up?" Pickle began to tease. "Yer missin' me?"

  "A little." Karen smiled, and headed for the bedroom door.

  Pickle sighed with a smirk and knew that his resting days were over; he needed maybe another hour of sleep and then he would finally make an appearance. He felt that Karen needed him and missed him.

  His eyes felt heavy, and he could hear Karen mooching about downstairs, and George Jones in the next room making the odd clatter. No matter the faint sounds that surrounded him, Pickle found that tiredness was arriving once again. With his body still craving more sleep, it was obvious that he still wasn't a hundred percent.

  *

  His dreaming was full of horror and stress, which wasn't surprising considering the week that he had to experience, and in his dream, Pickle was running on a road leading into the town of Rugeley. Beside him was Karen, and as he took a gander behind him, he could see the Snatchers in their hundreds, swarming towards the two individuals.

  At the front of the crowd were Davina Pointer, Janine Perry, Jamie Thomson and KP. It looked like they had turned. They were leading the rest and their faces were ashen; their eyes had a milky film over them and the hundreds groaned in excitement as they continued to pursue the struggling Karen and Pickle.

  They were gaining on the ex-prisoner and ex-nurse, and Pickle felt like his boots were running in sticky mud, and he could see that Karen was also struggling. He took another look around and could see that the dead were getting nearer and nearer. He could tell by Karen's face that the overall outcome didn't look good, and he began to feel a pain in his chest. His pace slowed and his thighs were throbbing.

  He saw that Karen had now pulled out her Browning and Pickle called over to her, in what little breath he had, and told her that it was a waste of time and that there was possibly a thousand behind them. They were going to be ripped apart; he could feel it. Then it suddenly dawned on him that maybe Karen had pulled out the gun to end her own life. What was the best way to die? Being ripped to pieces and disembowelled before your very eyes, or, a quick bullet to the head? It was a no-brainer, wasn't it?

  Pickle's face turned to horror once he saw Karen point the gun down to the side of her, at him. She had no intention of killing herself. She then released a slug that ravaged his left thigh; he cried out and fell to the floor. Pickle was in pain, clutching his wound, and couldn’t believe what she had done. Then he remembered what she had told him at Stile Cop when they were having a conversation.

  Pickle: "So if we ever get surrounded by those things, and it's just me and you carrying guns, what would yer do?"

  Karen: "Honestly? I'd put a bullet in your leg, and make a run for it as those cocksuckers tore you to pieces. At least then it would give me a chance to escape."

  Pickle: "I knew yer were going to say that."

  Karen: "Oh, I'm not joking."

  Before the hundreds had managed to tear him to shreds, in his dream, Pickle had woken up and was brought back to reality, an unwelcome reality, but less frightening than his dreams. He had been disturbed by a noise.

  The creak of the bedroom door forced Pickle's heavy eyes to prise open. He looked with blurry vision at a figure that emerged into the room; a small surge of adrenaline shot through his body, as for a moment he thought that a creature had managed to get into the house. His heartbeat decreased slightly when he saw George Jones walk in, looking behind him. George then turned his back and slowly shut the door, while Pickle closed his eyes to a squint so he could just see what was happening.

  Once George Jones shut the bedroom door, he turned around, clutching a pillow in his right hand, wearing a thin beam on his face. He crept forwards and went to the right hand side of the bed. George stepped gently, not noticing that Pickle's eyes were very narrowly open. George grabbed the pillow with both hands and was holding it horizontally, the way someone would to smother somebody to death.

  A shot rang out and within five seconds, Karen had ran from the living room to the bedroom and burst into the room, scanning the area, wondering what the hell was happening. She had dozed for no longer than a minute on the couch when the shot filled the house, and she had never ran up a set of stairs so quick.

  Still lying down, Pickle pulled the duvet back to reveal that he was holding the Browning that Karen had gave him earlier. It was obvious that it had been fired as George was on the floor, crying out in pain, clutching his right bloodied thigh with both hands.

  "What the fuck?" was all that Karen could muster.

  Pickle explained himself. "Mr Jones was seconds away from smothering me to death, isn't that right?"

  She shook her head and placed the palms of her hands on each temple." I knew you were a wrong 'un."

  "He's lying!" George screamed, helplessly trying to stop the blood pouring out from his thigh. "The man's crazy."

  Pickle swung his legs and stood to his feet. To Kare
n he looked that he was almost one hundred percent fit. Pickle pointed the Browning. It was three yards away from George's head. "Tell Karen yer real name."

  Clutching his thigh with both hands, he looked at Bradley and waggled his head and shrugged his shoulders in unison, as if he didn't know what Pickle was talking about.

  Pickle allowed there to be silence for a few seconds to allow the man to confess his real name, but it never came. It was obvious that the groaning, wounded man had no intention of telling Karen the truth, injured or not, and remained tight-lipped. Pickle laughed and added, "Well, allow me to tell her then."

  "What's going on?" Karen brushed her brown, greasy hair behind her ears, awaiting an answer from either man.

  "This man," Pickle spat, "is called Jason Bonser! He was in my prison."

  Bonser's eyes widened. "Pickle! I knew I'd heard that name from somewhere!"

  "Why didn't you say so before!" she yelled.

  "It just came to me. When I saw the tattoo on his back, earlier, it made me think. The nautical star on his forearm looked familiar, but it was the tat on his back and the initials, JB that set the alarm bells ringing. We were on different wings. A few months ago, I was in the prison's gym doing some cleaning and he was there with a few of his cronies including the delightful Kyle Horan, who stabbed a few inmates."

  "So you shot him because he stabbed some of your friends?"

  "Nope. I shot him because he wants us dead. He wants this house, the van and everything in it."

  "How do you know all that?"

  "He changed his name, didn't he? Jason Bonser has been in and out of the tabloids since his incarceration. Maybe he was scared you'd recognise him and his name. You're hardly going to give a drug criminal a ride, are yer?"

  "But I'm with you," Karen said with confusion.

  "But I befriended yer—saved yer; this fucker here makes me look like a choirboy. I heard stories about him in prison. Also, he shot that Snatcher outside unnecessarily making him a liability, an addict to violence, and it also proves that he's someone who has handled a gun before, and he just came into this room clutching that pillow." Pickle pointed to the floor where the pillow sat next to Jason Bonser's wounded right thigh.

  Karen was finding this hard to take in. She turned to Bonser. "I don't understand. Why didn’t you just kill us both when you took my gun and went outside to kill that Snatcher?"

  Karen stepped closer towards Bonser and knelt beside him. The penny had dropped. She knew exactly why he never killed them both. "So what was the plan then...Jason? You kill Pickle quietly, so I don't get disturbed while I'm downstairs, stopping me from making a run for it? You take me by gunpoint, keep me alive and rape me, then after that, kill me once you're bored? Then you live happily ever after in this house with a van full of food."

  Bonser snarled, "I actually appreciated it that you gave me a ride. I had no intention of harming you until you spoke to me like a cunt in the middle of the street!"

  Karen added, "So once I pissed you off, you then decided to get rid of us? Psycho!"

  He never answered her. Instead, he just sneered and spat in her face. "It was you that picked me up. Fuckin' whore. I fucking knew there was something not right when I saw that it was a prison van." He then turned to Pickle. "Did you get this from our jail?"

  Karen interjected, "Never you mind."

  "I wasn't asking you, slag!"

  She stood up, pushed him over onto his back and brought her right heel down onto the side of his face. Jason released a scream that immediately embarrassed him. The impact was painful, but the scream was an angry scream, the result of being assaulted by a young woman—something he would never hear the last of, if ever it had happened in the old world and his associates had heard of it.

  Strangely, the pain to his face was almost as bad as the bullet to his thigh, but it was the bullet to the thigh that could end his life if he didn't get the bleeding under control.

  Pickle raised his hand informing Karen to stop. Noticing the injuries to his leg and his face, Pickle spoke. "Let's not ruin the carpet."

  "You fuckin' bitch!" Bonser screamed, now with his left hand clutching his thigh and his right inspecting the damage to his face.

  "What are we gonna do with him?" Bradley tried to speak over the continuous tirade of taunts that were being thrown at her from the injured man on the floor.

  Pickle sighed, "We bandage him up, drive him in the middle o' nowhere, and leave him there."

  "That's it?"

  Pickle guffawed, "Well, what else you want me to do? Suck his cock?"

  Karen jokingly raised her eyebrows at her friend.

  Pickle shook his head with a smile. "Bradley, you're a disgrace." Pickle's face then lost its smile and he now wore a more serious expression: "Drop him off a few miles from Longdon. It's about two miles away. Even if he makes it, he'll be too exhausted and wounded to try anything; the village has about four or five streets in it—that's it! Don't go right in. If those things see the van it might draw them out. With all due respects to the population of the village, I don't want those things leaving and heading towards us."

  "And if he comes back?"

  "With that leg?" Pickle cackled. Karen's face was lacking any type of humour, so Pickle cleared his throat and took on a more serious tone. "Then he gets shot."

  There was concern on Karen's face.

  Pickle added, "Don't worry, I don't think we'll be seeing him again in a hurry, isn't that right?"

  Bonser shook his head continuously. "You won't see me again."

  "Let's hope not," Karen snorted.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  It had been days since she had seen her husband, days since the incident happened, and days since she had had a reasonable night's sleep. She had been in the house for a while now and welcomed the fact that it was vacant.

  When the initial outbreak occurred, she grabbed her daughter and fled the place. She knew her husband could handle himself and was hoping to wait out into the street for him to make an appearance. What she didn't know was that the street was also plagued with these vagrants who tried to claw, grab, and even take a bite out of her and her daughter. Thinking that these frightening souls were somehow crazy or infected with something, she ran as hard as she could with her screaming daughter in tow, because she came to the conclusion that she was putting both of their lives in danger by waiting around for her husband.

  Her husband never did make an appearance and she had no other choice but to run, especially when she saw a neighbour being brought to the ground and attacked by a group of the things. She had a daughter to think of. The street was scattered with seven or eight of them, excluding the ones that had got into the house, and it felt like that there had been a breakout at the local asylum.

  Earlier, she had heard a thudding noise at her front door, and went to see who or what it was. She opened the door and two of the things spilled into the hallway. In hindsight, she should have pushed them back out, locked the door and ran upstairs and wakened her husband, but how was she to know, on that surreal Sunday morning, her house was to be invaded by these things? It was a miracle her and her daughter weren't bit. Her motherly instincts also included the protection of her child, and she fought tooth and nail by pushing, kicking, punching and even head-butting, on two occasions, these creatures, before she grabbed her daughter off the floor and made a run for it out through the front door.

  They grabbed her and tried to claw at her as she barged her way past into the wide open.

  At first she thought it was burglars. She had heard a story in the local paper about an elderly couple last Saturday afternoon being robbed at knifepoint, and once they were tied up and had informed the two teenage burglars that their cash savings were hidden under the mattress and that there was jewellery in the bedroom cabinet, they went to those places and instead of untying the defenceless elderly couple after finding what they were looking for, they simply left them there tied up, as they left the premises and drove a
way in their clapped out vehicle.

  The old couple were found the next morning, but the gentleman had had a heart attack during the night whilst still tied up, and had been dead for hours.

  As soon as she left the street, she found that the side streets were clear and began banging on the front doors of the houses while holding her daughter, but the residents were either asleep or they just wouldn't let her and her daughter in. At the time she had no clue what was happening, and was aghast that no one would open their door to her, apart from one couple who were in the middle of leaving anyway.

  She ran over to the family who were frantically throwing bags into their jeep and saw the family, that had a five-year-old boy with them, in a rush to get out of the street. She begged them to help her and told them that she had been attacked. She remembered the husband saying to her: "They're here? Already? Oh, shit!" But she didn't know what he was talking about.

  He ignored her begging and the jeep screeched backwards and left the street quickly, leaving their front door open. A man from two doors down opened his bedroom window and urged the woman to get inside the house and lock all doors. Noticing that her face suggested that she didn't understand why, he then finally told her to find a channel where the news was, and listen to it.

  That entire hullabaloo seemed months ago, but since then, she had had a reasonably quiet existence.

  She lived off the basic food that was left in the cupboards and the fridge, and was thankful that the electricity and the running water still worked, although she was convinced that it wouldn't last for long. She made sure she ate things that needed refrigerated like cheese and meats, and left the tins until the fridge was left bare. Every two days she would also fill the bath. Before draining it, she would check that the water supply was still working, then fill it again with fresh water. She knew it was a waste of water, but she had a daughter to think of and wanted it to be as fresh as possible.

  It had now been over a week since she had left her husband, and still didn't know if he was alive or had suffered a terrible death. She assumed that if he was alive, he would be thinking the same, as both mother and daughter would have disappeared by the time he had woken up.