“You reckon?” Vince asked.
Karen shrugged and said, “I think.”
“Okay.” Vince approached the door of room 7C, and placed his right ear against it. He could hear nothing.
He placed his hand on the door handle, machete in his other, and gave it a try. The door opened. He looked at Stephen and Karen with puzzlement. He looked down to see that the doors used to be controlled electronically, possibly by cardkey. Using his fingertips, he gave the door a gentle push and peered inside. He looked back at Karen and Stephen and shook his head, telling them that there was nothing inside.
“Maybe it was the next room.” Karen sounded unsure.
Vince closed the door as quietly as he could and went on to the next room, room 8C. Again, he placed his ear against the door, heard nothing, then opened it. He peered in and screwed his face at what he could see.
An elderly member of the dead was hobbling around the room. It was a female, had no clothes on, and the scene itself, as well as the smell and the flies, turned his stomach.
He shut the door. “I don't think it's that one.”
The door to the next room opened and the woman with the short blonde hair popped her head out. “Hi.”
Vince gasped and dropped his machete in fright, the handle striking his foot. “Jesus, you daft cow. I nearly shat a brick.”
“Wanna come in?”
Nobody answered. Karen and Stephen were too busy laughing at the comical scene that had just taken place and Vince was picking his machete up off the floor, tucking it into his belt, clearly embarrassed.
Eventually, Karen managed to answer the bemused looking woman. “That would be good. Thank you.”
Chapter Ten
Stephen Bonser had been in Colwyn Place for nearly ten minutes by the time Paul Dickson made an appearance. Stephen had informed John Lincoln what had happened, telling him his version of events, and informed Lincoln that he didn't want to go out with him again. Lincoln told him to give Paul another chance.
Paul had finally made it back to the gate and Terry Braithwaite pulled it back as soon as he clocked Dickson.
“Decided to walk it back, did you?” Terry snickered, but Paul ignored him and walked along the road, heading back to his house. Terry knew what had gone on, because Stephen Bonser had been moaning about him when he arrived.
Paul Dickson heard Terry call him an ignorant bastard, but chose not to respond to it. He could feel the eyes of Lynne Smithers and Sandra Roberts from number nineteen, who were sitting on the front lawn. But he kept his eyes looking forward; his only goal was to get to his digs and have a sit down.
Before he could set foot in the house, he heard a voice yell, “Paul! Wait up!”
Paul turned around and could see the rotund John Lincoln making his way over. He knew what this was about. Must be serious, Paul thought. When does John Lincoln ever come over to an individual? He usually beckons them over to him.
“Can I have a quick word, Paul?” Lincoln coughed and gave off a big smile, stretching his chubby cheeks.
“What is it?” Paul pretended that he had no idea what Lincoln was going to talk to him about.
“About the little run earlier,” Lincoln panted, out of breath from making the short walk.
Paul tried to act innocent, keeping his face free of emotion. “What about it? Something wrong?”
“It's just that...” John looked uncomfortable about what he was about to say. “I was hoping that you and Stephen would get on.”
“The guy was constantly on at me, from the moment we left...”
“I've noticed that you've been quite isolated from most people here. I want to politely remind you that we're all one community.”
“Isolated?” Paul genuinely had no clue what the fifty-five-year-old was talking about. “I speak to Joanne now and again...”
“Look. How can I put this?” John pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “People don't know what to make of you. From what I gather, they like Pickle and Karen. As for Vince ... there's been a few complaints about him, mainly from females, but overall we love him for what he did before.”
“I don't care if I'm liked or not.” Paul sighed, “Is that what this is about?”
“You should care, Paul.”
“Oh yeah? Why?”
“If people think you're a danger, a bit weird or lazy, things could get ... awkward.”
Paul felt anger after John's words. Lazy? Weird? He had lost his whole family! Only his boy a week ago! “You know what? I don't give two shits.”
“But Stephen said—”
“Stephen can fuck off,” Paul snarled, making Lincoln twitch with nerves. “Next time he says anything negative about me, I'll stab the cunt.”
Lincoln took a step back after Paul's short rant and was lost for words.
Paul went into the house and slammed the door behind him, leaving John Lincoln standing in shock, trying to take in what had just been said to him. Next time he says anything negative about me, I'll stab the cunt, wasn't the reaction he was expecting and hoping for.
*
Paul Dickson went upstairs and into the bedroom. The place was beginning to smell fusty again, so he opened a window and then sat on the bed, dropping his head in his hands.
There was a dark cloud over Paul Dickson and he couldn't shift it. He knew he was being difficult and the Paul of old would have been a lot more sociable and easier to get on with, but three months into this nightmare, no sign of hope and losing his whole family had destroyed the man.
His eyes were wide and he rubbed the palms of his hands up and down his face. He wondered if Karen and the rest would come back with anti-depressants on this medical run of theirs. Maybe that's what he needed. But wasn't that just a temporary solution to a long-term problem?
He took off his black leather belt from his jeans and slowly wrapped it around his right fist.
He stared at the door, but the belt wasn't long enough for what he had in mind. He then looked up at the metal curtain pole and made a thin smile. He got off the bed and stood to his feet. There was a dressing table in the corner of the bedroom, to his left, and he took the stool that was underneath it. He placed the stool under the window, stood on it and fed his belt behind the pole. He tied it into a knot and then paused.
Was this really the way he wanted to bow out? After all his family had gone through, was this what they would have wanted for him?
Of course not.
What if he had another few years left? But what would be the quality of life be like? Would it be years of constant fear, people killing people, days of starvation and fleeing from another camp?
He looked at the belt that was hanging from the pole. How could he do it to Karen? And what about the trauma to whoever found him?
Paul untied the belt, breathed in and puffed out a depressed sigh, then sat back down. He then threw the leather belt to the floor. He thought about it every day, killing himself, but never went through with it ... yet.
Chapter Eleven
Thirty-four-year old Terry Braithwaite looked at his watch. He had just a few minutes before he finished his monotonous shift. He saw James Thomson step out of 20 Colwyn Place, a place he shared with Stephen Bonser, and revealed a smile. It was James that was up next for the next six hours.
Terry ran his fingers through his ginger beard and gave off a yawn that was hard to stifle. The baseball bat in his right hand looked new and was something that was given to him by John Lincoln, from the basement of 2 Colwyn Place, the house next to where Terry lived.
Terry Braithwaite had lived in Little Haywood for years. He had been a typical family man, had an average job, lived in a nice area and had a wife and two kids, one of each.
One beautiful Saturday afternoon, Terry was in the back garden, cutting the grass, whereas his wife was in the kitchen. She was making cookies for the school fayre, which was something the school organised every year as the holidays were getting near. With the law
nmower on, he never heard a sound, but there was a melee out in his street that he was completely unaware of.
He jumped when a man called Harold Jones, now deceased, ran into Terry's garden and slapped him on his shoulder. Terry was given a fright, turned off the mower and asked Harry what was wrong. Harry told him that a crazed man had come into the street and started attacking people, including Terry's kids.
In truth, a lone ghoul had stumbled along Colwyn Place and took a bite out of Terry's daughter, Kayleigh. His son, her brother, had tried to fight the thing off of his little sister but was attacked himself. The injured girl, who was bitten on her left forearm, ran into the house to tell her mother. Terry's wife ran out and tried to attack the being as it ate Terry's son, Leighton, but she also perished. Terry was completely unaware what was happening at the front of the street.
Hours later came the announcement on the TV.
The announcement on the Saturday, on the ninth day of June, had put the whole neighbourhood into a panic. If that wasn't bad enough, the Murphy family saw the disaster as a licence to burgle houses for supplies over the first weeks, and whoever got in their way would be beaten, sometimes to death.
The only positive about their presence was the fact that they killed a lot of Creepers. They didn't do it because they were helping the residents of Little Haywood, they were doing it because they were enjoying it. They loved the danger and the violence, that was until the violence was turned on them. Lance Murphy had been killed by Paul Dickson when he had broken into his house, albeit accidentally. Kevin 'Knuckles' Murphy and the dad was shot by Vince, and Jason was killed by a bunch of vigilantes, which included the Ferguson brothers, Derek and Ian, who lived at 16 Colwyn Place.
Thomson came over to Terry, wearing a big smile, and Terry wordlessly handed him the bat and walked away.
Miffed by Terry's rude behaviour, he said, “Jesus, you're almost as weird as that Paul Dickson bloke.”
“Bollocks,” said Terry. “I'm just tired.”
Terry walked into the first house of the street. His house. He walked into his living room and sat down on his couch, throwing his head back. He had no idea how long he could keep this up for. The more the days went by, the harder it was for him to keep going. It wasn't just his family and friends that he missed, it was his old job, it was ... everything.
Back in the day, he felt like he had a purpose, but now he was just surviving day to day. He had no family anymore, no friends or job. He was simply waiting for the day when the supplies ran out, or for the area to be swarmed by the dead, or even to be attacked and killed by a gang of bandits. Basically, he was waiting to die. Even a simple appendicitis or an infection of some kind could be life threatening now that hospitals were defunct.
He went into the kitchen and took a bottle of water from the top of the sink that he had purified himself. He took three gulps. It didn't taste great, but it was better than nothing.
He thought about his daughter.
When his wife and son were found, mutilated in the street, all those weeks ago, his daughter had managed to escape with just a bite to the arm. She was taken to her bed, fell into a coma, and then the locals came round, including John Lincoln, telling him to turn on the news.
It was clear after just ten minutes of watching television that his daughter needed to be put out of her misery. There was no emergency services to rely on anymore. The ones that were available had bigger fish to fry than a couple of dead bodies in a country village.
It seemed to take an age to convince Terry that he had no choice, and he ended up losing it, kicking people out of his house, telling them all to leave him alone. Before he left, he was told that the bodies of his wife and son had been wrapped up and placed in his back garden. Terry told them all that he would take care of his daughter himself and that he'd bury all three on his own. His neighbours reluctantly left him alone, but told him that they'd continue to call the emergency services to see what was going on.
Help never came.
Everybody was advised by the media to stay indoors, keep the doors locked and try and wait this thing out. His neighbours never saw him for days, but when he finally did emerge from his home, he told his surviving neighbours that his daughter, Kayleigh, had been dealt with and his beloved family were now at peace, all buried together in the back of his garden. He asked his neighbours to give him some peace to grieve, and they duly respected his wishes.
He slowly left his kitchen and stopped near the cellar door. He turned and glared at it with glassy eyes and a lump in his throat. He stroked the door with his forefinger and could feel that a breakdown wasn't far away.
He now placed both palms on the cellar door, dropped his head and began to cry. The tears ran out of his eyes like rain, and the man felt an aching in his chest. Was his heart finally breaking? He was never going to get over this. He was going to get used to it, but never over it.
“I'm sorry,” he cried. “I'm so, so sorry.”
Terry had always blamed himself for their deaths. If he had decided not to cut the grass on that glorious sunny day, he would have heard the screams without a doubt. He could have saved them—well, he could have at least saved one of them.
His sobbing was beginning to diminish and he wiped the saliva from his mouth with his sleeve, sniffed hard and winced once he could feel the contents of his nose now running down the back of his throat.
As time ticked by, these breakdowns of Terry's were becoming less and less.
In the first week, he cried constantly. In the second week, crying was still a daily occurrence. Eventually there were days that he never cried at all.
He was still sad, but his emotional breakdowns weren't as frequent as they were in the first days. He hadn't cried in days up until now, but this was a special day. Or it used to be a special day.
It would have been his daughter's birthday today. She would have been... She should have been eight.
Chapter Twelve
The jeep passed through the windy lanes at a steady thirty and went through a small place called Hixon. The village of Hixon was desolate, like a ghost town, and not only was there no sign of life, there was no sign of carnage either. It only took a minute to pass the tiny place, and Pickle or Danny couldn't see one broken window, dead bodies or remains. Nothing. Not even a bloodstain.
It wasn't long until Pickle had reached another cafe, a hundred yards outside the small village of Hixon. He pulled the vehicle onto the gravelled forecourt and parked it.
He took a look at the cafe. It was small, wooden made and creosoted green. It looked abandoned and the windows were hard to see in due to the drawn blinds.
He switched off the engine and took a peek at Danny. “Ready?”
The youngster nodded, checking his pockets to see if his knife was still there, and replied verbally. “Yes,” he nervously said.
“Right,” Pickle reached behind him and took his machete, “we'll check this out and then we'll go back.” He took another gander at the rundown-looking establishment. “I'm not holding out much hope for this place, to be honest with yer.” Pickle had a sudden change of heart and turned to Danny. “Yer know what? Just wait here.”
“If you say so.”
Pickle walked around the cafe. Round the back of the small establishment was a mess. There were wooden pallets stacked up untidily by a decrepit shed, and two large red wheelie bins were full and overflowing with garbage. Pickle's nose twitched as he picked up the smell from the rubbish, then stopped walking when he saw something.
There seemed to be a back entrance door. He tried it, but it was locked. He stopped in thought and wondered if he should break it down with his shoulder. Before he had chance to do anything, a voice was heard above him.
“There's nothing for you here.”
Pickle looked up and saw a man of similar age. He looked withdrawn, malnourished and was sporting a beard that was a mixture of grey and dark brown.
“Hey there,” was Pickle's response.
&nb
sp; “We just want to live in peace, my friend,” the man added. “We don't want no trouble.”
Pickle revealed a warm smile. “Neither do I, ma friend. If I knew this place was taken, I wouldn't have come 'ere in the first place. How yer keepin'?”
“Not bad.”
“Is it just yerself in the cafe?”
The man responded. “It's me and the two kids.”
“No wife?”
The man shook his head, took a large gulp and paused before answering. “She left us a while ago.”
“Well, I'm sorry for yer loss.”
“She's not dead,” the man managed a small smile, “well, she probably is now. She left us years ago.”
Pickle remarked, “Well, yer seem to be doing okay.”
“We're okay ... for now.” The man gave off a brave smile and added, “Just waiting for this to blow over. Hopefully the government will get things back on track.”
Pickle didn't want to rain on the man's parade. Hope was what seemed to be keeping the man going, so Pickle kept his mouth shut and wasn't sure there was a government anymore.
“Well, if things get bad for yer,” said Pickle. “Come to Little Haywood, Colwyn Place. We'll sort yer out.” Pickle wasn't sure he should have said that, but he didn't want a family to suffer if there was help not far away.
The man nodded and thanked Pickle.
“What's happening?” Danny appeared from around the corner. He didn't look happy. “I was wondering where you were.”
As soon as the man spotted the young Danny Gosling, his face seemed to relax.
“I wasn't gone that long,” protested Pickle.
“Anyway, one of those Creepers have turned up.”
“Where?”
“It's coming up the road, from the left.” Danny stroked his dark beard, waiting for Pickle to do something.
“And yer never killed it?”
Danny blushed and hunched his shoulders.
Snatchers Box Set, Vol. 4 [Books 10-12] Page 4
