“It’s okay,” said Pickle. “I won’t mention it again.”
“Anyway,” Drake continued. “We lost a few people that night, and then we met a bunch of guys from the prison. Apparently some officers let them out.”
“I might know some o’ them.”
Drake gazed at Pickle with confusion.
“I was one o’ the inmates in that very same prison. Only one houseblock was opened, over three hundred o’ us. The others were left to die.”
“Wow.” Drake elevated his eyebrows and shook his head. “I wasn’t expecting that, Pickle. What were you in for?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m very choosy of the company I keep, and I’m usually a good choice of character.” Drake gazed at Pickle with wide eyes and added, “As long as you weren’t in for rape or anything to do with kids—”
“I sold drugs.”
“Good. That’s acceptable.” Drake nodded and continued to finish his story. “Anyway, eight weeks ago we came across the hospital and decided to clear the place out. We had the numbers to do it, and I think some of the cunts from the prison enjoyed it, to be perfectly honest. I know I did. We now have around ninety people staying there. We’ve really built something, but I want us to get bigger and stronger.”
“I think Vince went to that hospital for medical supplies when he was at Spode Cottage, before we arrived there,” Karen said to Pickle. “That was about nine weeks ago. I remember him telling me that he went with Jack, a girl called Clare, and some guy called Paul.”
“Four of them?” Drake snickered. “Four people for a big hospital? Has that guy got a death wish or something?”
“I think they did okay,” she said. “They managed to get some supplies. It wasn’t until someone shot at their truck that things went tits up and they crashed. That’s how we met Jack and Vince. They went through the woods and ended up at Wolf’s cabin. Clare and Paul never made it.”
“Yer mentioned yer guys and families,” Pickle began, and rubbed his nose with his hand whilst contemplating whether to ask Drake the query he had planned to ask. “What about yours?”
Drake sighed and paused for thought. A second later he took an intake of breath and began, “They’re dead. End of story.”
Pickle lowered his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t really have anyone left either. My partner was killed in the first week. Karen had her mum; her dad and her stepsister in Glasgow, and her partner was attacked and had turned in the beginning.”
Drake leaned forwards, smiling at Karen, and reached over and squeezed her shoulder. This confused Karen. A week ago he was the enemy of Colwyn Place, and now he was offering them a place to stay and showing empathy for two people he hardly knew. She was warming to the man. Or was it some kind of trick?
Drake turned to the driver and said, “Okay, Dave. Your turn?”
“What?” The bearded guy called Dave flashed Drake a couple of looks and said, “My turn for what?”
“We’re all opening our hearts out here,” Drake said with a smile and a hint of sarcasm. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Really?” Dave the driver shook his head.
“Yes,” Drake said, losing his smile. “Really?”
“Nah, not me. Leave me out of it. I ain’t telling a couple of strangers my business, besides you tell us not to dwell on the past, remember?”
“I’m asking you to tell them about your past, not to dwell on it.” Drake turned to Karen and Pickle and flashed them a quick smile, but they could see Drake was angry and embarrassed.
“Look.” Pickle decided to step in and cleared his throat before adding. “It doesn’t matter, Drake. If Dave doesn’t want to…”
Pickle stopped speaking once Drake held his hand up and instructed Pickle to be quiet. He wasn’t finished with Dave yet.
Drake gazed at Dave and moaned, “I think it’s important to get to know our allies and—”
“Fuck that,” Dave huffed.
“Okay,” Drake said in a soft tone. “Dave, stop the vehicle.”
“What?”
Drake glared at the man and snarled, “Don’t make me ask you twice.”
Dave slowed the vehicle, finally bringing it to a stop, and pulled up the handbrake. He switched the engine off and said to Drake, “Now what?”
“Get out.”
“But … Drake …” Dave’s bottom lip drooped and now he looked like an upset child that had just been reprimanded.
“Don’t make me tell you again, you cheeky cunty cunt fucker.” Drake snarled and his eyes widened with rage. “Get the fuck out of this bastard vehicle!”
“Okay.” Dave held his hands in the air, as if someone was pointing a gun at him, and then opened the driver’s door. He stepped out of the vehicle slowly. Drake then shuffled over to the driver’s seat and reached over to shut the door and told Dave to walk the rest of the journey.
Drake started the engine and pulled away, watching Dave trudge along the grassy side as the pickup moved further away from the guy.
“Forgive me for asking,” Pickle said to the new driver, looking behind him as a bewildered Dave began to get smaller as the vehicle progressed. “But didn’t you say that yer wanted to increase yer numbers? Yer have just kicked out a man who could possibly bump into danger on the way back to the hospital.”
“He shouldn’t have disrespected me, Pickle. Or you and Karen, for that matter. One thing I cannot stand, apart from being interrupted, is the act of cuntishness, especially in front of guests.”
Pickle looked at Karen for a reaction, but she shrugged her shoulders.
Drake went through the gears and Dave had now disappeared from view as they went round a bend. “Another ten minutes or so,” Drake said. “And we’ll be there. Don’t worry about Dave. That cunt was a waste of sperm. His mother should have swallowed him.”
Drake turned a corner and was now passing Milford. He checked his rear view to make sure his bikers were obediently following him. A couple of more miles and they’d be at Stafford.
Chapter Forty Three
“Erm ... and where do you think you’re going, Miss Hammett and Mr Rowley?” Vince jokingly asked.
Both Joanne and Stephen Rowley were heading for the gate, with a rucksack each on their backs. “Washing clothes, chap,” Rowley called over. “Off to the Trent.”
“So you’re not sneaking off for a bit of the old in-out then?” Vince laughed.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Joanne flashed Vince a hard stare and pointed at Stephen Rowley. “I wouldn’t shag him.” She then put her hand over her mouth, shocked at what had just slipped out and said, “No offence, Stephen.”
Vince asked, “So you’re going on foot?”
“Well we can’t go by car anymore,” Rowley nodded over to the area when the vehicles used to sit. All that was left was blackness on the road, now that Drake had had them towed away and dumped in a field, the same field where young Jez was brutally killed.
Vince looked around the street. Terry and Bonser were on guard, David MacDonald and Stephanie Perkins were chatting and sitting on the doorstep of 2 Colwyn Place. Brenda Hatchet was nowhere to be seen as usual. There was no Danny, Old Tom or Craig around either, and Paul and Gail Smith were looking after young Kelly whilst Karen was out with Pickle.
Vince felt to his left to find his machete was still there and said, “Wait up. I’m coming with you.”
“You got any clothes to wash?” Joanne asked him. “I have my own to wash and some bed sheets that Karen wants me to clean. And Stephen has his and Danny’s clothes to rinse.”
“No.” Vince shook his head. “I don’t really have any to wash, not really. Besides, when you say wash, you mean dunking clothes in a dirty river with a bar of soap.”
Stephen hunched his shoulders. “Better than nothing, chap.”
Vince walked alongside Joanne and Stephen and asked a dazed Terry to open the gate. Terry Braithwaite looked sleep deprived and Vince was sure that the man was still affected
by his daughter’s demise, despite the fact that she had spent most of her time in the basement as a reanimated corpse.
Infected or not, she was all he had left until one of Drake’s boys had killed her.
Despite the truce, Terry hated Drake and his men.
The three individuals stepped out of the street once Terry, whose shift was about to finish, had slid the gate back. They told the man that they’d be no longer than an hour, and back before Pickle and Karen returned.
They strolled in the middle of the road and Vince offered to take Joanne’s bag off of her, but she replied, “Despite not having a dick, I’m sure I’ll manage.”
“Jesus,” Vince laughed at Joanne. “You’ve been hanging around that Bradley for too long.”
“I’ll let you carry it on the way back,” she said with a smirk.
“You mean when the clothes are wet and the bag is heavier?”
“Exactly,” she giggled.
“You think that with solar power some of the washing machines would be working, wouldn’t you?”
“You need a 5kW just to power one house, chap.” Rowley grunted and twisted his neck. “Those panels were all we could find. In the first month, John used to run his washing machine off a power inverter. And even then—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Vince rudely interrupted. “Great story, Steve, but which chapter do you shut the fuck up?”
Stephen ignored Vince’s remark and they walked for three minutes in complete silence.
*
The two men, Alan and John, were exhausted and were completely sleep deprived. With Alan, the tallest one, carrying an almost empty rucksack, they trudged their way over a large field, almost out of breath, their thighs aching with pain.
“Where to now?” the smallest guy, John, asked his companion. John was injured, holding onto his left leg as he was moving.
“No idea.” The man with the rucksack shook his head and pointed over to a huddle of trees. “But we need to go through them to continue forwards.”
John nodded and they both stopped walking and looked behind to see how things were. It looked grim.
The pair of them had earlier gone for a nap by a tree. They usually took turns, one keeping guard, but they were so exhausted that they couldn’t help themselves once they sat down. Before their nap, they hadn’t slept for almost forty-eight hours. The lack of sleep was bad enough, but things were about to become worse for the two men.
Their nap had been short-lived.
John, the shorter of the two, had released a scream as one of the dead was biting into his lower leg, through his jeans.
A second later and the pair of them were wide-awake, and his taller companion immediately picked up his rucksack and helped his friend to his feet. He kicked the dead beast over and then the two fled, with John hobbling in pain. Alan had looked over his shoulder and could see five of the dead shambling towards them, but there were dozens behind. He could have left his friend, but they had been through so much together.
There used to be four guys in the beginning. Two of them had been killed, but they weren’t victims of the dead; they had been killed by people, other survivors.
When it was four of them, they were taken hostage by some farm people, tied up, and two of their friends were taken away and never seen again. They assumed correctly that the farm people had resorted to cannibalism to survive.
Thanks to a mysterious stranger, who they had also met again a week later in the woods, they were released and wasted no time getting out of there, but survival had been hard since then.
They scraped and scavenged, and had many episodes with the dead. A few days ago they had a run in with a gang of four men that had chased them into the woods. They had to hide in a ditch as the men passed by, and they could hear them talking and it appeared the leader was called Hando.
And now this. The danger was relentless.
The two of them continued to gaze as the dead poured out of the woods. Alan, the tall guy with the rucksack, guessed that there were at least fifty of them, and was aware that there could be many still in the woods and heading to the outdoors.
“Just leave me here,” the shorter man cried and nodded down to his injured leg. “I’m fucked anyway.”
“True.” The man with the rucksack nodded. “But I’m not leaving you here to die in agonising pain. You deserve better than that.”
“What now?”
“Maybe once we get through those trees there could be a road, maybe a village nearby.” The taller man shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. There must be something in this area rather than just trees and fucking fields.”
The pair continued to move, the shorter man now holding onto his pal’s shoulder for support. They were forty yards from the trees and both looked over their shoulders again and could see the dead gaining on them. Three of them were ahead of the rest of the crowd, and the man with the rucksack told his companion that they needed to increase their pace. Alan knew that if he was on his own he’d be able to outrun the dead with ease, but his injured friend was holding him back and a thought filled his mind.
If things got worse, maybe he would need to leave him.
It’d be a horrendous way to go, but he was screwed anyway, and it’d be better than two people dying.
They continued for a further few yards in the long grass, and Alan felt a sudden pain in his left ankle as they got closer to the trees. The tall man released a shriek as the pain shot through his leg. Alan looked down and could see his ankle trapped in a spring animal coil trap.
“Fuck!” he screamed. “Fuck!” His pal hobbled over to him and looked around and pointed to his left, to the ground. “There’re two more over there.”
Alan cried, “Help me get this off!”
Only minutes before, he was thinking about ditching his friend, and now he was injured himself, albeit not infected. Was this karma punishing him for even thinking about leaving his friend to an agonising death?
His friend struggled to get down to his knees, and hopelessly tried to free the stubborn metal jaws that had clasped the bottom of Alan’s leg.
“Hurry up!” the tall man screamed as the horde progressed. There were dozens shambling together, but in front of the horde were three others that seemed quicker than the rest of the dead. “They’re getting closer.”
The two men had another look behind and could see that the three dead were only yards away.
With tears in his eyes, John said, “Sorry, Alan. I have to go.”
He stood up and hobbled away, whilst his friend began to scream at him not to leave him alone. The tall man did everything he could to open the metal jaws of the trap. He managed to get the jaws open wide enough to pull his foot through, but by that time the three dead were on him and began to tear him apart. The pain was even worse than what Alan had imagined over the months, and couldn’t suppress the blood curdling screams that escaped from his mouth.
His injured friend limped as fast as he possible could, which wasn’t that fast, and tried to hum in his head a Radiohead tune to drown out his friend’s screams. He didn’t turn around; he continued to hobble along the grass and entered the small section of trees.
“I’m sorry, mate,” John cried. “I’m so sorry.”
The idea of turning into one of those freaks frightened the life out of John, but being ripped apart by them frightened him the more. Despite knowing that that kind of demise would only take seconds, it was something he wanted to avoid.
His vision was now blurred and he could hardly see a thing. He was growing tired and could hear the sound of groaning and snarling from behind.
His legs were like lead and he was finding it hard to move them at all, his head spinning and nausea growing.
Was this him beginning to change? Was the infection starting already?
He hadn’t changed just yet, but he was technically infected, so it was just a matter of time. So did that mean the dead would just pass him by? Could they know or sense that he was
tainted meat? He wasn’t sure, and sure as hell didn’t want to put it to the test if he could avoid it, and did everything he could to continue to move.
He stood to the top of the grassy hill and looked down. The descent was quite steep, and at the bottom of the hill were country lanes, a pub at the bottom of the hill, and a garden centre further on to the right. He looked at the view and could see the villages of Colwich, Little and Great Haywood. He had given up.
Tears ran out of his eyes as he turned around once more. The first dead being was just seconds away from grabbing him.
It was pointless. Fleeing was pointless.
John fell to his knees, curled up in a ball and began to cry. He waited for the first bite and felt the teeth on the side of his neck before it was ripped open.
Chapter Forty Four
Vince, Stephen and Joanne reached the Wolseley Bridge and went down the steep grassy bank, near the place where Vince and Pickle had met Peter and Roger days before. Joanne struggled to get down the dirt incline without slipping, so Vince gave her his hand, but she stubbornly refused.
“Here’ll do,” said Joanne.
“Okay.” Stephen nodded.
They all stopped walking and looked at the fast flowing river where the washing was going to take place, but Vince was now regretting his decision to go with the pair of them. He was bored already, a little sleep deprived, and was beginning to get a headache.
“Did you hear that?” Joanne asked Vince.
“Hear what?” Vince responded and released a loud yawn.
“I thought I heard a scream.” She pointed in the distance at the top of a hilly field that was behind the Wolseley Arms pub. “I think it came from that direction.”
“You probably did, so what?” Vince sighed. “Let’s just get these clothes washed before I fall asleep.”
Vince was about to help Joanne take the dirty clothes out of the rucksack, but he stopped moving altogether.
Something had caught his eye.
He clocked the large house across the road, twenty yards down. It was the same house that Paul Dickson had been to, when he found out that he was in a house full of naked Snatchers. His eyes widened as he could see a guy with ginger hair taking a piss out on the front garden. Then the man stretched his arms, yawned, and looked to be taking in some of the fresh air. Once the individual turned around, Vince shook his head and grinded his teeth in anger.
Snatchers Box Set, Vol. 4 [Books 10-12] Page 72
