Terry towered over the man, and the biker was slowly sinking to his knees as Braithwaite continued to squeeze his throat, and let go once his victim released his grip and slumped to the floor. He was dead.
Terry sat down, exhausted, dripping in sweat, and placed both palms over his face and began to cry. His crying was cut short when a stranger, dressed in the same attire as the other men, burst through the front door. He looked at Terry, then the dead body of his friend in the hallway. His other friend, Paddy, was nowhere to be seen, but the cellar door was open. The man told Terry to stay where he was and made slow and careful steps towards the cellar door. He took in a deep breath and slowly put his head in the cellar and peered down, witnessing the defunct reanimated girl and his other friend who had had his throat mutilated.
“Shit.”
He took another look at the heartbroken Terry and ran out of the door and into the street. The other biker asked him what was wrong, but he continued to run towards the opened gate and went for his bike, urging his surviving pal to do the same, which he did.
“What the fuck is going on?” Karen asked, but the dozens of people in the middle of the street couldn't give the twenty-three-year-old an answer.
“This is very weird,” Vince sighed.
Pickle nodded in agreement and gave Vince a nudge. “Let's go inside.”
Both men jogged over to the first house of Colwyn Place, and could see straightaway that Terry was on the floor and one of the bikers next to him was dead. Vince could see that the cellar door was open and had a quick look in.
“Pickle, you need to see this shit.”
Harry Branston peered in and could see the body of the other biker and then his eyes clocked the young girl with the knife sticking out of her head. Vince and Pickle returned to the hallway. It didn't take long to work out what had happened.
“That's your daughter?” asked Vince.
“Yeah,” said Terry softly.
Pickle looked at Terry. “Yer have had her in here the whole time?”
Terry nodded.
“Shit,” Vince cussed.
Pickle asked, “What is it?”
“Don't let those other two leave! We can't let them tell that Drake fellow that two of their men are dead. We're gonna have to detain them or kill them. If we detain them and Drake's mob turns up later, looking for them, we can play dumb and say that we never had a visit from any of his men.”
Pickle and Vince ran out of the house, but they were too late. The bikes were starting to move away once they reached the front lawn of 1 Colwyn Place.
“Bastards!” Vincent had his head in his hands.
Karen, Stephen Rowley and John Lincoln asked what was wrong, and Vince turned to them and told them that Pickle will explain the situation.
Kindl pulled out a knife and said to nobody in particular, “I better take care o' that biker in the cellar, before he turns.”
“Turns?” Lincoln looked outraged. “What the hell are you on about?”
“Ask Pickle.”
Vince walked back into the place, went down the cellar’s steps and paused. He gazed at the poor girl with the knife sticking out of her head and he winced when the smell of death hit him. It was a wonder why nobody hadn't complained about the smell when visiting Terry. However, Terry had little visitors and kept himself to himself.
Vince took in a deep breath and looked down on the man that had had his throat ripped out by the infant. He crouched down and stuck his knife into the man's left temple, then waited a few seconds before pulling the blade back out.
He stood up and felt a little giddy.
He felt nauseous after doing this, and brought up a little puke in his mouth, quickly swallowing the stuff back down and screwing his face once this was achieved.
“Jesus,” said Vince, and stood up straight. “I must be going soft.”
He trudged back up the steps of the cellar, stepped into the hallway to find that Terry was still there.
“I'll leave you in peace,” Vince said to Terry before leaving to go outside.
*
The sound of mopeds stirred Paul Dickson from out of his seat and he ran to the window. He could see the bikers go by, which confused Paul. He was certain that he had seen four earlier go the other way. So where were the other two?
They must have stayed behind, he thought. But why?
Unless the four of them had decided to separate for some reason.
Paul looked to the right and saw six of the dead approaching the front entrance of the pub from the Stafford Road.
“Now where did you bastards come from?” he groaned, convinced that the sound of the engines had attracted them from wherever they came from, possibly the woods.
He ran downstairs and double-checked that the doors were shut. He peered out of one of the bar's windows and could see that the dead were in the beer garden, where the main door was. It looked like Paul was going to have to wait longer before making his way back to Colwyn Place, unless he fancied his chances killing six of the dead. He had destroyed fourteen a week ago, when he was alone in the woods, but that was a moment of madness. He had waited this long to get back to Colwyn Place, so another few minutes wasn't going to make any difference, he thought.
He kept an eye on the situation for half an hour and could see that the dead were slowly, one by one, leaving the beer garden and making their way back to the front of the pub on the main road.
Paul still had a problem.
To get back to Little Haywood he would still need to go by them. He was going to have to wait until they disappeared completely, but that could be hours. Paul was hungry, but at least there were still liquid refreshments left. He took a bottle of coke from behind the bar and headed back upstairs.
He entered the room he was in before, and peered out of the window whilst sipping on the coke.
Chapter Seventeen
“Now what do we do?” was the first query from Karen Bradley.
Most of the residents were confused, frightened, and talking amongst each other in the middle of the street. Two mopeds were behind the gate, belonging to the deceased, and Pickle had told Danson and Thomson to take them and put them in his back garden.
Vince gazed at Pickle and said, “Maybe I should go back in to get Terry. He has some explaining to do.”
“Don't bother.” Pickle rubbed his chin in thought. “It's obvious what's been happening. His daughter was never taken care o' in the first place. She's been in that cellar since day one. But the question is: what the fuck are we going to do when they come back?”
Lincoln shook his head and quivered with nerves. “They came here because Craig had killed one of them, so what do you think they're gonna do now we've killed another two.”
“We never really killed two,” said Vince. “Terry killed one and the other was bitten by his daughter.”
“Well, they're not gonna see it like that, are they?”
“Probably not,” Vince sighed. “I've got a feeling that this time they're not going to be as polite when they come back.”
“Aye,” said Pickle, “and it'll be more than four people that's gonna turn up, I can tell yer that for nothing.”
“Maybe if we grovel when they return,” suggested John Lincoln. “If we apologise...”
“They're gonna attack us,” Pickle said. “Whether it's through that gate, o'er the back gardens or o'er the concrete wall, or all three ... they're gonna want vengeance for three deaths in all.”
“So what do we do?” Lincoln put his hands behind his back and puffed his chest out. He was feeling the pressure.
“Get the people that can’t fight to hide in their houses, barricade the doors, and get their arses into the attics.”
Karen nodded. “Good idea.”
Vince said, “They could burn us out.”
“Not if the rest o' us stand and fight. I don't think these guys are blessed with guns.”
“No, but they could be blessed with numbers.”
&nbs
p; “Jesus, I hope to Christ Elza, Ophelia and Stephanie get here soon,” Karen huffed. “We're gonna need them. And where the fuck's Paul?”
Nobody could give Karen an answer. Pickle turned to John Lincoln and told him to address the residents that were still out.
Lincoln nodded, walked over to the people and clapped his hands to get the full attention of the small crowd, which now included Jez and Craig, stopping them mumbling to one another. It took a while for every individual to stop talking, but once there was complete silence, John Lincoln began to speak.
“These people are going to come back, mark my words,” he began. “We're gonna need numbers to fight. Everyone else who’s not up to it ... go. Go inside, barricade your doors, and get into your attics.” The crowd of people stared at Lincoln; no one was moving. “Now! If you're not prepared to fight, then go now!”
The crowd of people began to disperse and some went back inside. Old Tom went inside, so did all four members of the Danson family, as well as Beverley and the young child that she was taking care of. Beverley asked Old Tom if he wanted to join her, but he rudely waved at her, muttering obscenities under his breath about Craig and Jez and that this was all their fault.
There were fifteen that decided to stay. Pickle, Karen, Vince, Craig, Jez, Stephen Rowley, James Thomson, Stephen Bonser, Joanne Hammett, Lynne Smithers, Sandra Roberts, Gareth Broadgate, Danny Gosling, Freddie Johnson and even John Lincoln himself decided to stay put. If Paul and the girls were present, the numbers could have been up to a healthy twenty, including Terry that hadn't left his house yet.
Lincoln told the people that weren't carrying a weapon to follow him to the cellar of 2 Colwyn Place. Whilst this was happening, Pickle and Vince went into Terry's house and stood in the hallway as the sobbing Braithwaite sat on the floor, the dead man next to him.
“Terry,” Pickle said softly. “We need to move the bodies. And we also need to get ready.”
Terry stopped crying and looked up at Vince and Pickle. “Ready?” He wiped his eyes and cleared his throat. “Ready for what?”
*
The bodies had been put to the corner of Terry's garden. The two men were put in the left area, and Kayleigh's body was carried by Terry himself and placed in the opposite corner. He was going to bury her once the trouble that the street was expecting had passed. Terry, Vince and Pickle stepped into the street and could see a few people had retreated back indoors, but Lincoln was there with over a dozen residents, all armed.
Whilst Pickle, Terry and Vince were out in the street, Jez and Craig were apologising to the residents and told them that if they knew that something like this would happen, they never would have stayed at Colwyn Place. Some accepted that this wasn't their fault, but others blanked the two men. It was clear what Old Tom thought about them.
Pickle told Jez and Craig to get back into their house, regardless whether they wanted to fight or not, just in case there was a small chance that further negotiations took place instead of violence. If their faces were spotted, things could turn ugly.
“So what's the plan, Pickle?” John Lincoln asked. Lincoln was the leader, but this frightening scenario was new to him. “Do we stand here, waiting for them? Or do we hide and provide some kind of ambush, or...?”
Pickle looked at Lincoln and knew that just three swings of a bat would exhaust the man, but at least he had decided to stand his ground, unlike the other week where he stood on his doorstep with his arms folded as twelve of them destroyed the dead that were near the concrete wall.
“Yer want the truth?” asked Pickle.
“Of course.” Lincoln nodded.
“I'm not sure. I have no idea what's gonna happen now,” confessed Pickle, and could see the people that had stayed to fight were all listening to him. “They may attack us from the front, they may leap o'er the wall in numbers, or o'er the fences.”
“Or all three, like you said before,” said Karen.
Pickle nodded the once. “Or all three.”
“So, you have no strategy for this scenario?” Lincoln was panicking and seemed annoyed by Pickle's relaxed manner. “Is that what you're saying?”
“No, I haven't. Have you?”
“I don't know what to do. This is the first time something like this has happened.”
“Well, as the months tick by, it's more than likely that it'll happen regularly, which is why we need to sort this street out after we've dealt with this problem. Yer see, most survivors were probably family men and women, had normal jobs... But now they have forgotten what they used to be like, and most wouldn't think twice about killing a man if he had something that would help them survive for a few more days. These guys haven't come here for our supplies, although they will take stuff if we all get massacred, but I'm trying to explain how people have changed. People out there have survived because they've had to do some inexplicable things to keep breathing.”
“But ... But you're a nice guy.”
Pickle smiled. “I've still killed people, John.”
“Only because you had to.”
“True.”
“You're a man that has dealt with violence regularly,” Stephen Bonser stepped from the crowd, addressing Pickle. “You must know what to do to prepare for this?”
“I was a drug dealer,” Pickle laughed. “I wasn't in the SAS.”
Pickle glared at the glum faces of the crowd and could see that they were all frightened. He sighed, “All we can do is hang around and see what happens. Spread out and walk around the houses, check the gardens, just don't stand altogether like sitting ducks. Just make it look like yer ready, even if yer not, especially if we're being watched. And if they do attack, don't hesitate to put them down, because they won't.”
“I've never killed a man before,” Joan Hammett spoke up.
“Well, time to learn. Because they won't be too bothered by putting yer pretty face down. If they have enough time, they might even rape yer first.”
Joanne gulped and tears produced in her eyes.
Pickle felt bad for saying the things that he said, but they needed to know that if they backed down when the people came, it could be curtains for them and possibly for the other residents of Colwyn Place.
Pickle then told most of the residents out in the street to hang around their back gardens.
He told Rowley, Thomson and Bonser to guard the wall, whilst he, Vince and Karen stood by the gate. He didn't know where these guys were going to come from, but it made sense to Pickle that the more experienced people should be by the gate and the wall.
“We need to listen out for engines,” Vince spoke whilst rubbing his scarred face with the palm of his hand.
“I don't think we'll be hearing engines,” responded Pickle.
“What do you mean?”
“If they've got any sense, they'll park up a fair distance from the street and do the rest o' the journey here on foot. Element o' surprise. I don't think we'll hear them coming.”
“What happens if they don't come to the main gate or the wall?” Karen asked, still keeping her machete in her belt. “They could climb over the fences and enter the street through the back gardens.”
“The trouble is we don't know where they're gonna attack from. If they attack us by climbing the back fences, yer guys should give us a holler before they reach the street, just to let everyone know what's happening.”
“I think going over the main gate is too obvious. I think we should be walking alongside the back garden's fences,” suggested Karen.
“I hear what yer saying.” Pickle nodded. “But it'd be sod's law that they breach the main gate and we've only got Joanne and John Lincoln guarding it, no offence to them.”
“So now ... we wait?”
“It's all we can do.” Pickle pulled out his machete from his belt. “And get ready for a fight.”
Vince and Karen also pulled out their blades.
Chapter Eighteen
Paul could still see the six of the dead outside of the pu
b, and was baffled when he saw their heads turn in unison to the right, making Paul confused.
What could they hear?
Then Paul heard it.
Engines were approaching and the six ghouls moved away from the pub and shambled onto the Wolseley Road.
Twelve mopeds and a red pickup that was behind the bikes, appeared from Stafford Road and parked up outside the pub. The dead were blocking their way, so four men got off the bikes and put down the six with ease with their blades, then returned to their means of transport.
“Oh shit.”
Paul was certain that these guys were going to Colwyn Place, and it wasn't just for a chat. He looked at the twelve parked-up bikes and then at the pickup that was parked ten yards behind them. Paul didn't see the purpose of the pickup because there was only one man in it, the driver. His eyes managed to see that additional weapons were in the back. That was why the pickup was present. Wasn’t it?
Not only that, the vehicle may have been brought along in case any of their own men were fatally wounded or if they wanted to take a prisoner or two.
Paul didn't know for sure why the red pickup was with the bikes, but what he did know was that he couldn't stay in the pub if his people were going to be attacked.
He needed to act. He needed to act now!
*
Barry McIntire waited patiently behind his biker friends as four of them removed the pesky dead that were blocking their path. He kept the engine of his red pickup running and began to drum on the steering wheel.
He wasn't looking forward to this.
As soon as two of their bikers returned with news that the residents from the Little Haywood community had killed Paddy and Matty, Drake ordered men to go back immediately and take vengeance for their deaths. They were still unsure whether Jez and his older pal were staying there, but because of the deaths it was now irrelevant whether they were there or not. They had now lost three guys, and people were going to be killed for this. Barry was concerned, because he knew that they were going to go in there and kill random people.
Snatchers Box Set, Vol. 4 [Books 10-12] Page 33
