“You know what I mean.” Bonser threw his arm around Rowley and pointed over at 10 Colwyn Place. “That hot headed young thing has stolen your heart.”
“Don’t be daft, chap.” Rowley tried to laugh off Bonser’s comment, but as soon as the statement was made Rowley had flushed red. “She’s far too young anyway, even if I wanted to … to … well … you know.”
“You’re stammering, Stephen,” Bonser began to cackle, now annoying a clearly embarrassed Rowley.
“Piss off, will you?”
“So the thought has never crossed your mind?” Bonser continued to mock the man next to him. “Be honest.”
“Every night, chap,” Rowley sighed in defeat.
“I fucking knew it.” Bonser removed his arm from Rowley’s shoulder and clapped his hands, sniggering at his friend’s torment.
“Anyway, even if she threw herself at me, I couldn’t do anything.”
“Why not?” Bonser’s face went serious and the laughing had stopped. “You don’t suffer from that micro-penis syndrome, do you?”
“No,” Rowley sighed and shook his head at Bonser. “That’s the kind of crap Vince would have said.” Rowley looked at Bonser with disdain. “And no, I don’t have that … whatever you call it.”
“So … what is it?”
“She frightens the shit out of me.”
Chapter Nine
Roger and Peter had stepped out of their home and had informed Pickle and Vince, who had been waiting patiently outside, that their mother was nowhere to be seen.
“So what are you gonna do now?” Vince asked the pair of them.
Roger and Peter looked at each other and both simultaneously shrugged their shoulders. They didn’t know.
Roger said, “My neighbour, Harriett, was quite close to our mum. We’ll check in there, but you guys can go. You’ve done enough. Thanks for everything.”
“Well,” Pickle scratched his head, “Vince and I were thinking about going into that pub. I know it’s been three months since this thing has kicked off, but the place looks immaculate from the outside. Maybe we could half the supplies, if there’re any in there.”
Peter nodded in agreement, but there was no response from Roger. Peter pointed to a large white house to his left and informed Pickle and Vince that they were going to check on Harriett, hoping that their mother was there, and then they were going to get themselves settled in their mother’s home, regardless whether she was around or not.
“Fine.” Pickle nodded. “We’ll wait here until yer return. Then we can all go over and check that pub out, agreed?”
Roger and Peter nodded and headed for the house next door.
They tried the front, and then went round to the back of the house. Like most lawns, the grass was due a cut, but the two men had more pressing matters to be concerned about. They knew Harriet, and she had been a good neighbour to their mother, especially since their dad passed away, and it seemed wrong not to see how she was. Plus, she also had a one-year-old son. They had already discussed briefly that if she wasn’t in, then she must have gone elsewhere with their mother.
Two knocks on the door and no answer was enough to convince the two men that the back door needed breaking down, and Roger was the one that charged at the door with his shoulder. It only took two attempts to put the door through, and now both males were unsure whether to go in or not.
Peter looked at his older brother, by three years, and said, “Are you going in, or what?”
Roger never verbally responded and was the first to step in and called on Harriett, but there was no answer.
Now both men were inside and bypassed the closed living room and kitchen door and took the stairs. If Harriett was hiding, it wouldn’t be on the ground floor, so they decided to check out the downstairs more thoroughly once it was established that the first floor was clear.
Exchanging no words, the two men took their knives out and climbed the stairs, with Roger leading the way. The bedroom doors were open, and it only took a couple of minutes to realise that there was no one on the first floor.
“We’ll just check the rooms downstairs,” Peter said to his brother in a soft tone, “and then we’ll help out Pickle to see what’s in The Chase pub.”
Roger never said a word; he just nodded the once.
Both men trotted downstairs and Peter tried the door to the living room. He pushed the handle down and tried to give it a shove, but there was something behind it. He could feel his pulse speeding up in the side of his neck and knew that there was something wrong.
Peter turned to Roger and said, “Give us a hand, will you?”
Both men pushed the door open and were immediately hit by a rancid smell that made both men retch. Roger had managed to push the door open further and they could see a reanimated Harriett shambling across the room, her back to them. Both men released a sad sigh when they could see the dead woman, dressed in her peach pyjamas. They were sad because Harriet had turned, but also because their mother was nowhere to be seen. Harriett’s place was their last hope of finding their mother.
They glared at the woman that still hadn’t noticed them and was now facing the living room window, away from the two men, and Peter and Roger were crestfallen on what they were witnessing. They had known her for years, and it took a while to snap out of their sympathy for the woman. They had seen many dead in Cardiff and on their travels, but this was the first one they had seen that used to be somebody they knew.
Peter’s eyes widened and had briefly forgot that the woman had a son. Harriet had a small child, one-year-old, but he was nowhere to be seen. Surely she hadn’t… Peter shook his head. He didn’t want to think about that scenario.
“Let’s take care of her,” said Peter. “We can’t leave her like that.”
Roger nodded and went over to the dead Harriett with zero hesitation. She never turned around and remained gazing and clawing at the pane of glass. Roger stuck the knife into the back of her head and had finally put the woman at peace. He wiped the blade on the woman’s peach pyjamas, trying not to breathe in the smell of death, and returned to Peter’s side and said, with emotion in his short query, “So, where’s the kid?”
Peter shook his head. “No idea.”
“Kitchen next.”
Peter and Roger approached the kitchen door and both were apprehensive. The child hadn’t been seen yet and this was the last room in the house to be checked. They were both certain that the child was going to be behind the door, unless Harriett had eaten him, although they never mentioned to one another that this could have happened.
Roger pulled down the handle and used his fingers to gently push the door open. Both men gasped as they saw the dead toddler, strapped in his high chair.
Roger’s eyes filled, but Peter was more controlled. Both men stared at the macabre sight for a while in silence; the pair of them stared for a good minute.
The child was an awful grey colour, wearing a yellow and blue Bob the Builder T-shirt; his head was leaning to the left. It was obvious from the smell that the helpless and strapped-in child had defecated whilst he slowly starved to death.
“I wonder what happened.” Roger was the first to speak up, wafting the flies from his face.
Peter thought for a moment. “Harriett went outside, for whatever reason,” he guessed, “then she was attacked. She then came back into the house and realised she was infected. So she separated herself from her son.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I dunno. So she wouldn’t turn and eat her own child?” Peter elevated his shoulders and added, “Maybe she thought that someone would eventually come round and help, like our mum, or … fuck, I don’t know. Anyway, she turned, nobody came to check the house and save the wee man, so the poor little thing starved to death.”
Roger rubbed his chin in thought and asked, “And what about the bite marks on his arms?”
“The kid starved to death. Those bite marks came from his own mouth.”
Roger puffed out
a depressed breath and shook his head. “Now what? Do we bury Harriett and her boy?”
“Not yet.” Peter looked up to Roger, tears in his eyes. “We’ll come back. Let’s help Pickle and that other guy check out the pub.”
“Then what? Are we staying here? In mum’s house?”
Peter waggled his head. “I don’t know.”
Chapter Ten
The RV was parked up and Elza, Ophelia and Stephanie hesitated before stepping out. They had a quick peep around the place and Elza, the driver, was the first to exit the vehicle. The warehouse looked like an old hangar from the Second World War, where bombs used to be made, and they could see the Cost Price sign in yellow and knew they were at the right place.
Ophelia and Stephanie were now out of the vehicle, Ophelia was holding her baseball bat, and stood next to an unarmed Elza. All three females were staring at the hangar that was situated in the middle of the countryside, miles from the nearest town.
“Just a simple matter of going in and taking the stuff, right?” Elza turned to Stephanie for a response.
Stephanie elevated her shoulders and said, “Hopefully.”
“Look, there’s a large shutter to the side.” Elza pointed at the wide metal door that was used in the past for deliveries arriving at the place. “If we can get inside, we can open that shutter and reverse the RV in.”
“Let’s see if we can get inside first,” Stephanie moaned, with a tone that was less excited than Elza’s previous comment.
All three headed to a green door that was the same size as a main door to somebody’s house, and tried it. It was locked, solid, and the girls didn’t have a crowbar to try and prise the thing open.
“What now?” Stephanie huffed.
Elza placed both hands on her hips and looked over at the large shutter. “Those things aren’t really thick, are they?”
Stephanie scratched her head, unsure what Elza had in mind.
Elza headed back to the RV, playfully shaking the keys in her hand, and went back inside. As soon as she fired the engine, Stephanie knew what the impatient thirty-one-year-old was going to do.
The vehicle pulled forwards, then stopped. The reverse lights came on, and then the vehicle slowly went backwards, heading towards the shutter. Stephanie wasn’t sure if the vehicle could damage the shutter; she wasn’t sure how thick the metal was, and what kind of damage it would do to the motorhome itself.
Elza reversed the vehicle slowly, and Stephanie smiled when the shutter bent and made an awful clanging sound. She then lost her smile when a thought skated over her mind. What if there were dozens of dead inside, and here was Elza Crowe creating a gateway for them to escape? Maybe the workers from this place never left, never went home and had all turned.
Elza stopped the vehicle and pulled the RV out a metre or so. She popped her head out of the window, asking Stephanie to check if she had damaged the vehicle much. Stephanie could see a few scratches and a few dents, but nothing substantial.
“It’s okay,” Stephanie said, and was pleased that Elza’s erratic behaviour had actually been beneficial. “It’ll be worth it anyway, whatever the damage.”
Elza smiled and selected reverse once more, and this time pressed harder on the accelerator pedal, the vehicle going through the shutter with ease. The back half of the RV was now inside the warehouse and Elza pulled the vehicle forwards until it was fully out. She jumped out with her bat in hand and all three made cautious steps to the entrance that had been created. From what they could see the place looked empty, but Elza took a few more steps forwards, as Stephanie went into the RV to get her bag and bow, and she peered inside.
Steel racking was to Elza’s right, the metal reaching twenty feet at least. Abandoned forklift trucks, reach trucks and pallet riders were scattered across the large area, and she raised a smile when she saw four pallets of tins. The tins could be visibly seen and were wrapped heavily in cellophane. The wooden pallet was the base and the stack was obviously designed so that a set of forks could go under and be loaded onto a truck.
Elza, with Ophelia following, could see that the tins were mainly beans, ravioli and spaghetti. Not only did this food have a long best before date; it was also supplies that could be eaten hot or cold.
Elza walked over to the Komatsu made battery-powered forklift trucks and tried all three that could be seen on the shop floor, but every truck had a flat battery.
“We’ll leave the RV where it is. I was gonna reverse it inside,” she said to Ophelia and could now see Stephanie finally entering the place, holding her bow. “I’ll cut the cellophane away from the pallet.”
Once Stephanie was inside, Elza wasted no time and began to cut the cellophane and watched as the tins collapsed onto the floor.
“I’ll get the bags from the RV,” Stephanie said.
“Don’t bother,” Elza called over and pointed at the already made cardboard boxes stacked up in the corner. There were dozens of them already made up. “Fill them and pile them up in the back. Pile them up in the motorhome until we can hardly move, right up to the front seats.”
For twenty minutes the girls filled and carried heavy boxes until the vehicle was rammed full of supplies. Stephanie worried about the weight in the vehicle, but it wasn’t something that was mentioned by Elza. Stephanie went inside the hangar to fill up the last box and could see there was still some supplies left over.
“This is gonna take two runs,” Stephanie said with a smile on her face. She left the premises, carrying a large box, and could already see Elza and Ophelia sitting in the front seats, ready to go.
Stephanie went into the vehicle at the side and struggled to get by the boxes. She dropped the last box and climbed a few of them to get to the seats at the front. She sat in the middle and could see Ophelia to her left, narrowing her eyes and leaning forwards, staring at the wing mirror. Elza had now noticed this and asked her what was wrong. Obviously, Ophelia never verbally answered, but she did stare at her friend and nodded behind her, in the direction of the warehouse.
“Did you see something?” Elza asked.
Ophelia nodded and rubbed her face, her fingers going over the two-inch scar on her left cheek.
“Look, let’s just go.” Stephanie shifted in her seat uncomfortably.
“Wait.” Elza held her hand up and asked Ophelia further, “Was it a person that you saw?”
Ophelia scratched her short blonde hair and shrugged her shoulders. She wasn’t sure.
Elza looked at Stephanie. “Best to check it out. After all, Pickle wants us to bolster the numbers at Colwyn Place. If there’re people in there ... we could probably squeeze a couple in.”
“Okay,” Stephanie sighed, itching to get back to Colwyn Place.
“You wait here,” Elza said. “Me and Ophelia will check it out.”
The two adults left the vehicle with their bats, and an exhausted Stephanie lay her head back on the head restraint. She closed her eyes and released a moan.
Elza and Ophelia crept through the opened warehouse and could see a hallway that began where the doors of the toilets were. Because of no electricity, the place was dusky and no doubt the hallway would be worse.
“Shall I call out?” Elza asked her dumb partner.
Ophelia rubbed her face in thought, and then shook her head. She slapped Elza on the shoulder and pointed ahead of her.
Three Snatchers stumbled out of the dark hallway and staggered onto the shop floor. Elza couldn’t understand why they hadn’t turned up earlier, when they were transporting the tins to the motorhome, or even when she had reversed the RV into the shutter. The three females were hardly quiet when they arrived here.
“Let’s just go.” Elza’s eyes gazed at a set of double doors by the toilets and was convinced it was a store cupboard. It had a bolt slid across it, but no other lock could be seen. “But then again.”
She raised her bat and stormed over to the three dead and put down two before Ophelia reached her. Ophelia White struck the final
being three times, and as Elza scanned the floor, looking at the three dead with their polluted brains bashed in, she said, “Let’s check out the cupboard.”
Ophelia shook her head at her friend, but Elza was determined to find out what was inside.
“I know the RV is full, but I wanna makes sure if it’s gonna be worth a second run.” She pointed to her right where tins were scattered on the floor. “I’m not coming back here just for them. It’s not worth the petrol.”
The two women walked over with cautious steps. Elza slid back the bolt with no hesitation and asked Ophelia if she was ready. Ophelia nodded and waited for Elza to open the doors. Once she did, the two women were greeted with nothing but darkness. The fact that the warehouse was dusky itself didn’t help matters, but she was sure that in the past the place was used for some kind of storage.
Elza could just about see the defunct light switch on the right hand side of the wall. There were shelves on either side, and Ophelia unknowingly brushed by a dusty blanket that fell off the shelf and onto the floor, creating a cloud of dust that couldn’t be seen. They walked further in, but with no light Elza had decided that they shouldn’t investigate any further and that they should all be happy with the tins that they had found on the shop floor.
Elza could just about see the outline of her friend and patted her on the shoulder, telling her that they should go back. Ophelia nodded in agreement and sneezed once her nose picked up the dust particles.
Movement could be heard from Elza, and two seconds later a mass of arms reached out from the darkness and pulled both females to the ground.
Chapter Eleven
Karen had been in the house for the last ten minutes. When she returned, she placed the machete against the wall, and left the two Stephens in the street. She went into the kitchen for a glass of water, and then returned to the living room and slumped onto the couch, head leaning back.
She inspected her plain, but creased, yellow T-shirt, and was pleased that there were no bloodstains from the ghouls she had put down. She thought that maybe she was a bit harsh with the two Stephens. Maybe they were right. Waiting for the dead to come to the wall, to have that protection, would have been a safer option.
Snatchers Box Set, Vol. 4 [Books 10-12] Page 56
