No words had to be said.
Karen and Vince ran to the side of the road as the van eventually ploughed through the dead crowd. Limbs and heads were removed from the rotten and fragile bodies once they were mowed down by the heavy van, but some of the dead were still mobile.
The vehicle stopped after it had successfully went through them, creating only superficial damage to its exterior, and Pickle slipped the motor into reverse, went back and hit some of the ones that were missed. He also struck the dead that had been hit, but were on the ground, trying to get back to their feet.
Once this was done, he moved the van forwards again and went over two heads of the dead that were lying on the floor, the wheels crushing and popping the heads like grapes, and then he pulled the van over.
He jumped out and could see three were left. Two of the dead were still standing and one was getting to its feet. Vince and Karen walked past the van, quickly passing the front of the bonnet that was now dressed in dark blood and rotten flesh, and stood by Pickle's side.
“What happened to the young man?” Karen asked Branston. “You didn't...?”
Pickle shook his head. “I knocked him out.”
“We need answers from him.”
“Aye.” Pickle nodded over at the three dead. “But first...”
They approached the three dead, who were now all on their feet, and Vince was the first to put one down. His machete entered the male ghoul's head from the left side and it dropped to the floor seconds later. Karen opted to bring her machete down and into the centre of the skull of the female twenty-something, and Pickle rammed his blade under the chin of the final one, the tip of the blade sticking out of the top of its skull. There were too many bodies to remove from the road, and Pickle told Vince and Karen that they would have to move them another day. All three now headed back over to the field.
“We'll get the guy,” said Pickle, “throw him in the back and take him to Colwyn.”
They entered the field; they could see that the man was dazed, wriggling on the floor and moaning.
The three of them stood around him, put their bloody machetes back into their belts and watched as he struggled to get on all fours.
“Jesus,” Karen laughed and looked at Pickle. “How hard did you hit him?”
Pickle shrugged his shoulders. “It was just a bit o' a slap.”
The guy looked up, confused and bewildered, then groaned once he realised what had happened and the predicament he was now in.
“Time to explain yerself, sonny.” Pickle stood up straight and folded his arms.
“I don't have to explain to any of you cunts,” he snapped.
Pickle patted his blade and told the young man, “Mr Machete disagrees with yer, and yer don't wanna piss him off.”
The dark haired man looked up at the three of them and sighed in defeat. He sat on his backside, pulled his knees to his chest and put his arms around them. He rested his head on his arms and moaned about how his head hurt.
Pickle said, “I'm waiting for an answer.”
“I volunteered to come here,” the young man began. “If I'm not back in an hour, it'll be seen as a sign.”
“What kind o' a sign?”
The young man never answered and still moaned about his headache, so Pickle asked again.
“What kind o' a sign?” he asked for the second time.
“If I don't return,” the young man began, “then Drake will be coming here with a shit load of men. So if you keep me prisoner, you're gonna get a little visit within the next sixty minutes. But if you let me go...”
“And why are yer so important?”
“I’m Drake’s little brother. If anything happens to me…”
Vince, Karen and Pickle all looked at one another.
“Why would Drake allow his brother to come all the way here on his own?” Pickle asked.
“I just wanted to do something. I’m sick of him treating me like a kid.”
Pickle sighed and said, “So what was the plan? You ram our gate, empty these freaks into our street, then flee in the van and go back to your base in Stafford?”
“Pretty much.” The man nodded. “Then a day or two later we were gonna turn up to see the state of the place, see who was left.”
Karen asked him, “What kind of animals are you?”
“You think we're bad people,” the man laughed and sniffed hard, then emptied both of his nostrils on the floor. “What you have to realise is that we think you're the bad guys. And let's not forget, even before we turned up at your place, one of your guys killed Hardy in the woods.”
Pickle didn't know what he was talking about at first, but then remembered the story Craig had told him and how he had met Jez. “Craig was protecting Jez. And he wasn't one o’ us when that happened.”
“Whatever, man.”
The young male slowly stood, forcing the three to take a step back and nervously put their hands on the handles of their machetes, and rubbed his head. “For fuck's sake,” he whined and rubbed his hands over his face. “You could have killed me with that punch.”
“Don't exaggerate,” Pickle began to snicker. “I didn't hit yer that hard.”
“Pickle?” Vince was getting annoyed with the small talk. “So what do we do? What are we gonna do with him?”
“I think he's tellin' the truth about this sign story. I think he is Drake’s brother as well.” Pickle took in a slow deep breath and rubbed his stubbly chin as he pondered. “If we kill him, then Drake and his mob will be here soon. If we take him prisoner, then Drake and his mob will be here within the hour.”
“He could be bullshitting about being Drake’s brother,” Vince spoke up, but Pickle disagreed. “Maybe if he never returns, the people back in his camp wouldn't give a shit.”
“I don't think he is bluffing,” Pickle sighed. “These people know that this place o' ours exists. If we don't get any trouble within the next day or so, we'd probably get some in a few weeks.”
Karen turned to the side and spat on the floor. “What're you saying?”
“This predicament we have with this Drake guy has to be sorted, otherwise it's going to hang o'er our place. Living in fear and paranoia isn't living.”
“You're not going to let him go, are you?” Karen took a threatening step forward, glared at the young man and reached for her machete.
Pickle held out his arm, stopping Karen from progressing any further. “We need to let him go.”
Vince decided to stay out of the little argument that was taking place. He wasn't usually a man that would sit on the fence, but he understood why Karen was so annoyed, and he also understood why Pickle was going to release the man. Pickle was doing it for the safety of the street. If the young man went back and told Drake that he was captured briefly, but then was allowed to leave, with the van, then maybe Drake and his cronies would see the residents of Colwyn Place in a different light.
“Do you really want to let this piece of shit go?” Karen questioned her close friend. “He was going to release a shit-load of Snatchers in the street, in our street.”
“True,” Pickle nodded, “but what damage would it have done really? By the time they spilled out of the van, everyone would be safely inside. It'd just be a pain to remove them, that's all. But that's done now. Maybe if we let him go, let him live, Drake might cut us some slack.”
“There must be another option.”
“No, there isn't,” said Pickle. “We don't have a choice. The numbers they have ... we just can't deal with that.”
Vince cleared his throat and stepped in, backing Pickle up. “And I agree.”
Pickle glared at the young man and said, “Get back in the van and get yer arse back to Stafford. Yer said that Drake would be upset if you didn’t return, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Tell Drake to come and see me. We need to sort this out, once and for all. All we want to do is live in peace.”
“So … you’re definitely lettin
g me go?”
Pickle nodded. “Give me yer word that you’ll tell Drake what I just said.”
“You have my word.”
Chapter Thirty Seven
Jim Danson slid the gate back once he clocked Karen, Pickle and Vince. He watched as they walked through without uttering a word to them, and was baffled why they never spoke to him, or at least thanked him. Was something wrong? He looked again and noticed that their machetes were covered in dark fluid and that blood was on their faces.
Once Danson had shut the gate, he couldn't help himself. He mumbled, “A thanks would be nice once in a while.”
Pickle stopped walking, immediately making Danson gulp and wishing he'd kept his mouth shut.
Pickle turned around and said to the family man, “We've got something to tell yer, but I need the whole street out.”
Vince and Karen walked over to the concrete wall, where Stephen Bonser and Rowley were standing. They told them to get everybody out into the street and ask no questions. The two concerned men did as they were told.
It took seven minutes for every one to be present, including Danson's children and wife. All surviving residents nervously talked amongst themselves, wondering what the hell was going on and what Pickle had to say.
Pickle moved to the front of the crowd that stood in the middle of the road, with his back to the main gate. Vince and Karen stood next to him. Paul was there, but decided to hang near the back.
Harry Branston clapped his hands three times to get their attention, and asked for them to be quiet.
“Guys,” he began, “I have something to say.”
“Is it bad news?” Jim Danson asked.
“It's always bad news,” Terry spoke up.
Talking amongst the residents began again, and Pickle asked for quiet once more and he got it.
“Sometime today, possibly, we’re going to be paid a little visit by the same gang again.”
“You mean they're going to attack us?” Jim Danson's wife cried out, her arms wrapped around the shoulders of her two children.
“I don’t think so,” Pickle sighed. “We just know they might be here within the hour.”
“That's it.” Jim Danson threw his wooden bat to the floor. He looked over to his wife. “We're leaving.”
“And go where?” she cried. “We have no car, we have—”
“Safer in numbers,” Vincent spoke up. “Going out there in the long-term is a death sentence.”
“Here, here,” Elza spoke up.
“Staying in here is a death sentence,” Terry Braithwaite snarled. “But it never used to be. Not until those two showed up.” He pointed at Jez and Craig, who were standing at the left of the crowd, on the pavement.
“If you hadn't have killed that man, Terry,” Craig retaliated, “then maybe we'd be better off.”
“The only reason they came here in the first place,” growled Terry and pointed at Jez, “was because of that little shit. And you also killed one of their men, so I hear.”
“I didn't have a choice.”
“Enough!” Pickle yelled, stopping the argument before it had chance to gather momentum. “The reason why we're in this mess is now irrelevant. It's fucking happening, whether we like it or not.”
“How do you know all this?” came the rare outburst from Old Tom. “I mean, how do you know they're coming back? I don't get it.”
“We were out by the river,” Vince decided to step in. “We saw a van. It was heading to the camp, so we stopped it.”
“And?” Bonser said.
Pickle said, “And ... it was a gang member that was driving. The plan was to drive the van into our street and release a shit load o’ the dead in here. They were in the back o' the van. We managed to get rid o’ them and contain the guy, but we had to let him go.”
“I suppose that explains the blood on your faces,” said Bonser.
“Let him go?” Rowley said in astonishment. “Why, chap?”
“He told us that he was Drake’s brother. If he didn't report back to Drake within the hour, then Drake would be coming here with an army … or something like that.”
Jez nodded and informed Pickle, “Drake does have a much younger brother, but his name escapes me.”
Rowley asked another question “So you let him go because you had no choice?”
“That’s right,” Pickle said. “We let him go, and we told him that I want Drake to come here to talk. I want the man to be here to prove we’re just normal people and that we’re not animals.”
“Well, we're not animals,” said Terry and scratched his head. “We're just normal people, trying to survive.”
“I know, but do they see it like that? The young man we let go said something that made me think before he fled in his van.”
“And what's that?”
“We think they're the bad guys, but they think that we are. I suppose it depends on what side yer on.”
“Pickle, What're you on about, chap?” Stephen Rowley cleared his throat and twisted his neck. “These guys have killed families. Have you forgotten already that one of their guys killed that poor baby?”
“O' course I haven't. That was one man that killed the toddler. We can't tar them all with the same brush. If these guys have got a base back in Stafford, then there must be women and children there as well. I don't believe it's a place with just men and men only. Which means they're just like us. They have families, but they obviously have a few bad apples in their group.”
“But what if Drake is one of the bad apples?” Stephen Bonser spoke up. “If he's the leader, then they're gonna do as they're told.”
“Drake is a bad apple.” Jez stepped forward. “The guy's a maniac. He has a few close buddies that are like him, but most of the guys are good people from what I could gather. I wasn't there long.”
“Have we got the materials to make a homemade bomb?” Elza asked no one in particular. “I read many months ago that all you need is—”
“Don't even think about it,” Pickle warned.
“This is crazy,” said Old Tom. The seventy-six-year old from 3 Colwyn Place was annoyed and pointed his wrinkly finger over at young Jez. “This is all his fault. We should have handed him over when we had the chance.”
“Let's not go through this again,” Pickle sighed.
“So what if Drake doesn’t want to talk, and he comes here to give us a beating or a killing?” Rowley threw his arms up like a petulant child. “What then?”
“Myself, Karen and Vince will greet them, if they do turn up.” Pickle took a deep breath in and tried to swallow his anger. “Everybody else stay inside. I don't want them to think that we're here for a fight. They lost a lot o' men when they attacked us, but we had to fight, we had no choice. When they arrive, we'll open the gate for them, we'll welcome them in. We'll let them know that we just want a peaceful solution to this mess.”
Bonser folded his arms and asked Pickle, “And if they turn nasty?”
Pickle gulped and stared at all the adult faces that were waiting for an answer. “I don’t think they will. I’ve just spared his brother.”
Bonser persisted, “Very well, but if things turn ugly, what do you suggest?”
He said, “Then me, Vince and Karen will probably die today. The rest of yer should flee, o'er the back gardens and try and disappear into the country.”
“Is that it?” Jennifer Danson cried, still embracing her two children. “Is that your ... plan if they start attacking us again?”
“It's the best I've got, darling,” Pickle spoke with his teeth clenched, then flashed Jennifer a menacing glare. “Have yer got anything better?”
Chapter Thirty Eight
Jez was the first to go inside. He wiped the tears from his face and growled at himself as he looked in the living room mirror that hung over the fireplace.
He then stared out of the living room window and could see that most of the residents were still out in the street, still talking to one another, panic scrawled
over their frightened faces.
What was he doing? Why was he waiting around in this street, waiting to get butchered like the other poor bastards the day before? Pickle said that he wanted to talk to Drake, but what happens when Jez is spotted? What happens then? Will Drake forgive him, forgive the traitor?
He thought he had finally landed on his feet when he and Craig met Pickle. How long did that last? A couple of days? Then ... a massacre.
Despite some comforting words by Craig before he left to go in the house, Jez was still convinced he was mainly to blame for what happened yesterday. Once the dust had settled, even if Colwyn Place came out of this crisis on top, some of the residents would want Jez's head. He was sure of it. Terry and Old Tom's negative comments were just the tip of the iceberg.
The youngster went into the kitchen, grabbed a carrier bag from underneath the sink, took a sharp knife from the wooden block and grabbed himself a bottle of water from the side.
Fuck it! It was time to go.
He took one last look out of the living room window and could see Craig turning around and looking his way. Craig gave Jez the thumbs up, and the teenager returned the gesture with tears in his eyes. He liked Craig very much and felt like he was betraying him now that he was running away, but he felt that he didn't have a choice.
He sneaked out of the back door and walked through the long grass to get to the fence. He peered over the fence and could see it was clear. All he could spot was a long road and shrubs on the other side of it. Below his fence was a pavement for pedestrians. The young man put the carrier bag over the fence, with the knife and water bottle inside, and dropped it.
He climbed over and landed on the pavement without breaking, pulling or twisting anything. Any kind of injury, especially in a world where there was no medical help, would not be a good start to his lone adventure that he was about to embark on.
The young man picked up the carrier bag from the floor and headed left, knowing that going right would eventually take him by the main steel gate of Colwyn Place. He didn't want that. He didn't want to be spotted leaving the place.
Snatchers Box Set, Vol. 4 [Books 10-12] Page 43
