“I could have,” Stephanie responded with a serious tone.
David cleared his throat and decided to change the subject. “Me and you are the same age.”
“Yes?” Stephanie smiled, unsure where David was going with this.
“And yet...” He paused and dipped his head with shame.
“Go on.”
“You go out on a run with those two women, but when the street is attacked I'm told to hide in the house, in the attic.”
“Do you have any experience of killing these things?” she asked bluntly.
David flushed a little and shook his head.
“Then ... that's why. If you haven't killed a Creeper, you'd certainly struggle against a fully grown man.”
“But we're the same age.”
“I know, but the only reason why I have experience out there is because I was thrown into the deep end, so to speak. I had no choice when this shit kicked off.”
“Me and my dad lived on the Springfields, in Rugeley,” David began. “We left to go to Sandy Lane and was kind of protected for a few months from what was really happening in the outside world.”
“That’s what I'm talking about. We’ve had two different starts to this new world.”
“Everybody keeps calling it that,” David huffed and seemed to be in a bad mood. “New world. What a load of shit. Since this new world has happened I've lost my dad, my friend Charles Pilkington, and his family were also killed...”
“What happened to your mum?”
“She died a while back.”
“Oh, I'm sorry.”
“Anyway,” David stood up and looked ready to go inside, “it was good to talk to you, but I'm going inside now.”
“Okay.” Stephanie was confused why their little chat was so short, but then saw his eyes filling up. David MacDonald was becoming upset and was uncomfortable by this.
Stephanie placed her hand on his shoulder and said to him, “If ever you need to speak to someone, give me a shout.”
David nodded and stepped into his house.
“David?” said Stephanie.
He stopped and turned around.
“There's no shame in crying.”
“I know.” He produced a thin smile and slowly shut the door.
Stephanie took a stroll back to the house where she was staying.
*
Paul knocked on the door of Joanne Hammett's and gasped when it was opened.
One side of her face was covered in contusions and he took a step back to get a look at the damage to her countenance.
“You didn't hear?” she said.
Paul shook his head. “I’ve been busy doing…”
“You better come in.”
Once they were both in the living room, Paul remained standing up, whilst Joanne sat down and began to tell him about her visit to the WOE guy that was being held.
She explained to him why Pickle thought it'd be a good idea to take her along, but it had obviously turned out a little sour. The prisoner had almost escaped and Joanne and Terry had been assaulted. Paul sat down next to Joanne and the pair of them embraced.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
“It's okay, “ Joanne spoke softly. “It's not as bad as it looks.”
“What the fuck was Pickle thinking, taking you there? And I would have let the prick piss on the floor anyway.”
“He thought it was a good idea taking me there. And he didn’t let him piss on the floor at first because he wanted to gain the man’s trust and treat him with respect.”
“I'll fucking kill that prisoner,” he seethed, saliva running down his chin.
“No, you won't,” she said.
“Wanna bet?”
“I think you've killed enough people yesterday, Paul Dickson. Just keep holding me.”
They continued to embrace for a further minute; then Paul broke away from the embrace and asked her if she wanted tea.
She said yes.
Chapter Thirty Three
Terry Braithwaite sat in his kitchen and listened to the loud yelling and moaning coming from his cellar. He felt his nose where the hostage had struck him before he tried to make his escape, and winced. It wasn't broken, thankfully, but it was still sore to touch.
The rant from the cellar had been going on for ten minutes. Terry had no idea how it had started. The guy had been quiet since he had been chained back up. Terry was counting down the minutes for when he was back on the gate, just to get away from the noise. He decided to get up and walk to his door. Maybe a sit on his lawn and some fresh air would do him some good.
Terry walked down the hallway that led to his front door and heard the man's voice yell, “I need a fucking drink down here, man!”
Terry stopped moving, puffed out a breath, then went back to his kitchen and grabbed a small bottle of water. He went to the cellar door, and unbolted it. He made his way down the steps and left the cellar door open so that some kind of light was in there.
“You want water?” Terry laughed; he lifted the bottle and shook it, teasing the young prisoner.
“Give it fucking here!”
Terry added, “Why would I give you water after you tried to break my nose?”
The prisoner said, “Look, I'm sorry about that.”
Terry could just about see in the dusky cellar. The man had dropped his head, looking guilty because of the previous attack, or pretending to look guilty.
“What I did was desperate,” the man began to explain. “I wanted to escape. I'm not going to talk, so I had no option. If I don't talk and show you guys where we stay, you will probably kill me. If I do, Drake will probably kill me.”
“Is he that bad?” Terry asked.
“He can be. He'll be pissed that he lost all those guys yesterday.”
“I bet it came as a surprise the way we fought back?”
The young man began to laugh, annoying Terry, and snickered, “Okay, I admit it. We underestimated you lot the first time round. We thought the number of guys we had was enough to give you an arse kicking. But we have three times that many back at our base. If Drake wants to kill you all, and he probably does now that you've killed a lot of his guys, then he will.”
Terry never responded and the prisoner could see that Terry's confidence had drained from the information he had been given.
“A storm is coming your way.” The prisoner decide to taunt Terry further and said with a smirk, “And it's not gonna be pretty.”
“Is that right?” Terry put the bottle of water into his pocket, then folded his arms and listened to the man's response.
“Oh yeah.” The young man wore an annoying and conceited smile. “I reckon by the end of the week you'll be joining your family.”
Terry took a step forwards, his fists clenched, and snarled, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“When I was brought here,” the young man said. “You know, after that maniac killed my friend, I noticed through your kitchen window that there were graves. That was your family, right?”
Terry clenched his teeth and winced when his nose picked up the odour of urine. It looked like the prisoner had pissed on the floor after all.
“Yeah,” the prisoner began to laugh. “That was definitely your family in that fucking ground.”
“Shut up!” Spittle left Terry's mouth and disappeared into his ginger beard, his eyes were wide with rage.
“Or what?”
Terry grabbed the prisoner’s shirt with both hands, making the young man gasp, and spat, “Keep your mouth shut, if you know what's good for you!”
“Why should I?” the prisoner laughed. “I'm not gonna talk. I'm not gonna show that Pickle where we live, so I'm gonna die anyway. It's just a matter of when.”
“Just ... keep quiet.”
“Who did you lose?”
“I said ... keep your fucking mouth shut!” Terry grabbed the man's shirt tighter.
“Your wife? Kids?” The man continued to laugh and placed his hand ov
er his mouth, mocking Terry. “Oh shit. You didn't lose the whole deck, did you? That's rotten luck.”
“Shut up!”
“What did you have? One kid? Two? It looked like a pretty big grave.”
“Quiet!” Terry's blood was boiling and he was shaking with rage.
“You do realise that it's all your fault,” the young man continued to tease. “The basic requirement of a father is to protect his child or children.”
“I swear to fucking God—”
“I don't know how you can live with yourself.”
Terry release a strident cry and slammed the man's head off of the concrete wall, again and again, then released him and allowed him to drop in a heap.
He was dead.
Terry then took a step back and began to cry. He walked over to the steps and sat on the second-from-bottom one to get his breath back.
He sobbed hard and his tears fell out of his eyes like rain from a cloud. He looked over to the dead body with blurry eyes and quickly wiped the tears away with the palms of his hands.
A minute had passed and Braithwaite stood up and went upstairs to go outside and break the bad news to Pickle.
In all his rage, he had no idea how many times he smacked the young man's head off of the wall. More than three times? Less than ten? No matter how many times he had done it, the man was dead.
Terry stepped outside and was struggling to get his breath. His heart was racing, he felt dizzy and his head was banging. He walked down his path and onto the pavement. He could see Pickle stepping out of his house with Karen and Vince in tow, Stephen Bonser and Rowley were by the wall and the man of the Danson family, Jim Danson, was on the main gate.
Terry wiped his wet eyes again and could see Pickle, Vince and Karen heading over to him. They knew something was wrong.
“Yer look terrible,” said Pickle to Terry. “What's wrong?”
Terry stood motionless and shook his head. All three could see he had been crying.
“Terry?” This time Karen tried. “What is it?”
Vince probed further. “Is it the prisoner?”
“He taunted me,” mumbled Terry, and ran his fingers through his ginger beard. “I couldn't help myself.”
“What's he on about?” Vince looked to Karen, but she shrugged her shoulders.
“He taunted me about my family.” Terry continued, “He said he wasn't going to show you where this Drake fellow stays, no matter what.”
Pickle was growing concerned about Terry's behaviour. “Terry, what have yer done?”
“I couldn't help myself.”
Pickle turned to Vince. “Go and check in the cellar.”
Vince jogged into Terry's house and returned just thirty seconds later. Pickle and Karen were looking over to him and he shook his head.
Nothing needed to be said. The prisoner was gone. They all knew that the prisoner was dead.
“Another one, Terry?” Pickle sighed, “Well that's that then.”
Pickle was angry. The young man that was chained up in Terry's cellar was the only hope for peace that they had. A part of Harry Branston wanted to punch Terry's lights out, but what would that achieve?
“What do we do now?” Karen asked Pickle.
“Wait and see what happens.”
“Is that it?” Karen said, “We could hang around the two main roads and ambush them or something, but we don't really have the numbers for that.”
Vince didn't agree with Karen's idea and said, “Even if we had the people back that we lost yesterday and ambushed the WOE characters, there would be a lot of vulnerable people left in Colwyn. Imagine if those WOE fellows turned up here by using a different route and we weren't here. It'd be a slaughter.”
Vince put his arm around Terry, telling him that he wasn't angry for what he did.
“So we just wait and see what happens?” Karen asked Pickle.
Pickle rubbed his stubbly face with the palms of his hands and looked exasperated. “There's nothing else we can do, thanks to Terry … again.”
Chapter Thirty Four
Craig Burns was in limbo.
He was standing near his main door and wanted to do something useful. He decided to stand with thirty-four-year-old Jim Danson by the gate. It was a day of danger and strong paranoia. The street was on high alert and Pickle wanted the whole street to show any outsiders that they were strong and still had numbers, so most of the surviving residents were now out and armed.
With his hockey stick in his right hand, Craig went over to Danson and asked if he was okay.
Danson looked nervous, but managed a nod of the head.
In truth, he wasn't okay.
What had happened to the street made him fear for his own and his family's lives.
Waking up to the news that John Lincoln had also died only increased the depression around the place, and Danson seemed angry that the victims of Colwyn Place were simply buried in a field together.
It didn't seem right.
Even though Lincoln had said more than once that if anything happened to him then they should throw him in a ditch, Danson thought about his own family.
Could he stand and watch if his wife passed away and was put into the ground?
Pickle had told him that it was the way of the world now, and that once a person dies, the body doesn't matter anyway. It was simply a temporary shell for their soul to dwell in.
For a non-believer like Danson, it was hard words for him to hear.
“So how long have you been here?” Craig asked the father of two.
Jim seemed annoyed that Craig was speaking to him, but Craig never took offence. He guessed that Danson was irritable because he was edgy, or maybe he was one of the residents that blamed him and Jez for starting this mess.
“I've lived here for years.”
“Oh, so you're an original resident?”
“Yep.”
Craig bit his bottom lip and knew that getting information out of Jim was like getting blood out of a stone.
“I was married myself,” Craig spoke up and added sadly, “I also had two kids, then they were taken away from me.”
“Sorry to hear that.” There was very little empathy in Danson's voice, but Craig wasn't offended by this and decided to continue to try and get to know the man.
He asked, “What's your wife's name? I've seen her about once or twice, but—”
“Why do you want to know my wife's name?” Jim gazed at Craig coldly, waiting for an answer.
“Just making polite conversation,” Craig half-laughed. “God, sorry.”
“My wife is called Jennifer. I have a nine-year-old boy called Zac, a seven-year-old girl called Kelly. You don't see my family much because my children suffer from night terrors since this apocalypse began, and my wife suffers from anxiety, depression and also has nightmares. Basically, we are all constantly tired. Is there anything else that you want to know?”
Craig didn't respond to Jim's rude outburst; he simply exhaled hard and turned away.
Realising that Danson wasn't in a talkative mood, Craig stood in silence with his hockey stick in his right hand and began to think about Jez. This world was crushing the youngster; he wasn't dealing with it very well and Craig worried for his mental health.
Having someone like Paul Dickson on the camp was bad enough, but to have another resident to lose their mind...
Craig sighed; he then walked away from Jim Danson.
His company clearly wasn't wanted.
Chapter Thirty Five
“What do woman and noodles have in common?”
Vince was over at the wall with Stephen Rowley. Bonser was a few yards away, sitting on the floor, clearly bored.
Stephen Rowley sighed and said, “Vince, I'm not really in the mood for jokes.”
Vince gave him the punchline anyway. “They both wiggle when you eat them.”
“Not funny, chap.”
“Aw, come on. You've got a face like a camel chewing toast.”
&n
bsp; “And why's that, chap?” Stephen twisted his neck and cleared his throat. “Doesn't it bother you that we've lost people yesterday? I was close to some of those guys, chap. Maybe if it was Karen or Pickle you wouldn't be such a pain in the arse.”
“It's just my way of dealing with shit,” Vince said in a serious tone. “I've lost a lot of people too. I lost my son before the apocalypse.”
“I just don't think people would appreciate you walking around and telling your daft jokes, that's all I'm saying.”
“We need to lift the spirits up somehow. We could be attacked any minute.”
“Well, if we are...” Stephen lowered his head and paused. He tried again. “If we are attacked, then I don't think we're gonna last very long. They killed the Fergusons and James. They were fighters. The rest of them ... Freddie, his mum, Gareth, Beverley and the kid ... they never stood a chance.”
“If we flee, we'd be leaving behind an embarrassment of riches, plus they'd find us anyway, if they really wanted to.”
“I know that, chap,” Stephen grunted. “If they don't get us out there, then the dehydration and starvation will. Sure, we could load the vehicles with all the produce we have and flee to somewhere miles from here, but stuff will run out eventually. I don’t think leaving is an option.”
“Agreed.” Vince nodded. “We couldn’t abandon this place now. Look what we have. We have solar power—okay, so it's not the best. We have vegetables, medical supplies... If we left, we'd go back to scavenging and going on runs, and we can't be doing that again. The more you go out there on runs, the less there is to take. There's nothing left now anyway.”
“I guess so.” Rowley nodded and was about to say something else, but Vince had beaten him to it.
“I never thought about the long-term, not at first.” Vince sighed and rubbed his scarred face. “When it first kicked off, when I was staying at the Spode Cottage, we had some provisions, but me and a couple of others spent our time emptying shops, pubs and empty houses. We did have a water well. That was a bloody lifesaver. Sometimes I think about going back there.”
Snatchers Box Set, Vol. 4 [Books 10-12] Page 41
