“Back in a mo.” Understanding their hesitancy, Pickle went to the back of the van and opened up the doors to let Richard out. Pickle explained to Richard what was happening, told Mildred and Quint to stay where they were, and both males went to the front of the vehicle.
“You sure about this?” The guard on the left asked Richard.
The young man nodded.
There was more hesitancy from the two men and Pickle decided to speed things up.
“Either one o’ yer get Tracy,” he then pointed to the van, “or we come in, using this.”
The guards started whispering again and it looked like an agreement had been made. The male on the right disappeared and returned three minutes later with Tracy in tow.
She looked at Richard and then a man she recognised. “Pickle?”
Pickle asked Tracy, “Why didn’t yer two wait for me and Karen last week?”
“A couple of guys picked us up and brought us back here.”
“Come back with us,” said Pickle. “Yer will be safer.”
After Richard explaining to his girlfriend about what Marsden and his crew were capable of, Tracy was eager to leave Gnosall for Stafford.
“Any chance you can get a fucking move on!” Vince yelled, his head out of the opened passenger window. “Some of us need a shite.”
“Right, lads.” Pickle looked over to the two guards and saluted them. “Better be off. Tell Manson that I’m sorry about his hand.”
“What are you talking about?” the man on the right asked.
“Yer’ll see.”
Richard and Tracy went into the back of the vehicle and were introduced to Mildred, Stephanie and Quint, and the van was moving within the minute.
Pickle looked over at the two guards and released a depressed sigh.
“What’s the matter?” Drake queried.
“Just got a feeling I’m looking at a couple o’ dead men.”
“Explain.”
Marsden and the rest will be pissed off when they return, and when they find out that they handed Tracy o’er with little fuss and fell for my wee story, I think they’re gonna get beaten, or worse.”
“So?” Drake hunched his shoulders and said, “Fuck ‘em.”
“Aye, I thought yer would say that.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Karen Bradley made the eerie walk to the first floor of the building and up the steps that she hardly used when she was a staff nurse. Like most patients and staff, Karen used to use the lifts whenever she needed to go upstairs to Ward 33, which was rarely, as she was an A and E nurse and had nothing to do with urology, oncology or neurology.
She reached the first floor and shuddered as she looked down. She knew it was safe. The building had been checked out and people stayed up here, but the scene of the darkened corridor sent shivers down her spine, which confused her, considering what she had experienced over the last three months.
All the windows of every ward was opened so light could get in, and people used candles only on a night if they really had to. God knows what it was going to be like when the winter kicked in, when it’d be dark from four in the evening to nine in the morning, she thought.
Karen made slow steps along the corridor, trying to make as little noise as possible, and had to have a snigger to herself at her behaviour. Even before the apocalypse, if she was going to bed on her own, she would make her way upstairs to her bedroom and look over her shoulder now and again. It was something she had been doing since she was a kid and had never grown out of it.
She finally reached Ward 33 and could see that the door was closed. There was a metal keypad on the door, which obviously didn’t work anymore, and Karen decided to knock before entering.
“Who is it?” a male voice called out from behind the door.
“It’s Karen.”
There was a silence for a few seconds and the response was, “Who?”
“Karen Bradley from Colwyn Place,” she said. “I think we need to talk.”
More seconds of silence occurred and she could hear movement. He was making his way towards the door, but slowly.
She thought it was strange that he just didn’t tell her to come in, but remained behind the door and waited for him to open it.
The door opened, and the man recognised her. He rolled his eyes and the average man in height and weight left it open and headed back over to the chair in the corner of the room where he was sitting. He had made it plainly obvious that he wasn’t happy to see her.
“Is that an invite to come in?” Karen asked.
“What do you want?” he groaned, not answering her query.
Karen stepped inside and shut the door behind her. “A word. If you don’t mind.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you people.”
“You people?”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“Okay.” She held up her hands. “At least hear me out.”
He leaned back in his chair. The room was almost in darkness, as the light from outside was minimal because of the clouds that hung above in the sky, suffocating the great ball of fire.
She could smell the booze in the room and saw an almost empty bottle of liquor sitting by his seat. This annoyed her slightly. He was only getting these kinds of benefits because he was Drake’s brother.
“Haven’t seen you about since we arrived,” Karen remarked. He wasn’t making the effort to talk first, so she decided to.
“Been keeping a low profile,” he mumbled.
She assumed he was soused and decided to stay and talk to him further. “We’ve been here for over a week now and this is the first time I’ve seen you.”
“Since your pal almost knocked me out.”
Karen smiled. “Well, you did turn up with a van claiming that it was full of supplies and that it was a peace offering for attacking Colwyn. When really it was a van full of the dead and you wanted to drive into Colwyn Place and release them in the street.”
“It was revenge for the people we lost.”
“Anyway, we gave you Paul Dickson to keep the peace.”
“He escaped.”
“That wasn’t our fault.”
What the man didn’t know was that Karen gave Paul, whilst saying their tearful farewells, laxatives and a razor blade to help with a possible escape and whispered in Paul’s ear what she thought he should do before Drake took him away. He messed himself when he was in the back of Drake’s car, forcing them to a stop as he claimed he needed the bathroom, and then cut himself free with the razor blade.
“Anyway,” the man groaned. “What’s the point of your visit? I hear your lot and Drake are like family now.”
“Hardly.” Karen released a gentle chuckle and ran her fingers through her dark hair. “He’s being civil to us, and we’re doing our bit as far as runs are concerned.”
“So I hear.”
“Drake has hardly mentioned you since we got here. Everything alright with you two?”
“Why are you so bothered?” he snapped.
“I’m just curious, that’s all.”
Drake’s brother unashamedly bent down and picked up the bottle of bourbon. There was an inch of liquor left and he finished the remains of the bottle in front of Karen.
“After my trip to your place, or near your place,” he began, “I went back and told him the message that your friend Picnic told me to tell him.”
“Picnic?” Karen placed her hand over her mouth to prevent a laugh. “It’s Pickle. His name’s Pickle.”
“Whatever.” The man brought his shoulders up and dropped them quickly. “He was annoyed what I did and we’ve hardly spoken since then. I think it was about two weeks ago. I don’t know. I would have to look at the calendar in the staff room.”
“He was probably annoyed because you could have been killed.”
“He was more annoyed because I disobeyed him. Fucking control freak, that’s what he is.”
“How do you guys keep up with the date and
month in this place? Back at Colwyn—”
The man interrupted, “Drake, as well as others, circle the day every morning so they know what day and month it is. There’re calendars all over the hospital.”
“Makes sense.” Karen nodded. “Gives you a clue how close winter is, I suppose. A doctor from Ward 34, the oncology department, brought in a calendar of Cliff Richard as a joke.”
The man managed a smile and said, “It’s still there.”
“So what next for you?” Karen sniffed and added, “You can’t sit about and drink all day.”
“I have no job to do and I’m considered a waste of fucking space by my loving older brother.” He released out a depressed sigh and added, “Maybe I’ll just leave.”
“The hospital?”
He nodded.
“And would that be your way of punishing him, for the way he spoke to you?”
“Fuck him!” he snapped.
He shook his head and Karen could see the man was hurt and decided to leave him alone. She held out her hand and said, “Let’s start again.”
He shook her hand, fighting back the tears.
“If ever you need a chat, come to Ward 22. I have a clinic set up there.”
“I’ve heard.”
“I’ll be seeing you ... um...?” Karen had suddenly forgotten his name.
“Alan.” He produced a thin smile. “My name’s Alan.”
Karen turned and headed for the door.
*
Quint looked around the ward that was going to be his home for the foreseeable future, and released a sigh. He ran his fingers through his long grey beard and thought about his dead wife and his old place that he had to flee. He smiled and shook his head. She was such a pain in the arse, but he did miss her and the old place where they lived. He wondered if his kids were okay. He knew that he would never know for sure if they were okay or not, but tried to remain positive.
He had killed many of the dead over the months, but overall his place wasn’t badly hit because of the location.
When the time came that he had to leave, he spent many days roaming the countryside with his bag of supplies that slowly dwindled as the days ticked by. One of the highlights of his journey, apart from being picked up, was the blackberry bush that he had come across when he reached the area of Hixon.
He hadn’t eaten in a day and all he had in his bag was a bottle of stream water that was unfiltered.
He then came across a large bush of blackberries and ate every single berry. The next day he had diarrhoea and had to rely on the bracken to clean himself up. Not a comfortable experience, but it could have been worse.
And then a day later he was picked up, all thanks to Vince.
He checked out the bed where he was going to sleep, and was impressed and surprised with the cleanliness of the place.
“This’ll do,” he said with a smirk. “This’ll do just fine.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The van went by the small place of Milford and knew they were only a mile or so away. The van passed The Barley Mow pub and hit an incline with a bend.
As soon as the road straightened up, a body could be seen up ahead, in the middle of the road. The corpse was face down and had half a dozen crows on its back, pecking at whatever exposed flesh was available. The back of the neck appeared to be the most popular.
Pickle began to slow down, but Vince told him to drive around it. He needed the toilet and wanted to get back to the hospital as soon as possible.
“No.” Drake spoke up. “Stop the van and I’ll get out and clear it.”
“What’s the point?” Vince huffed.
“My guys use this road all the time with runs and stuff,” Drake began to explain. “We’ve always been in the habit of dragging every dead body to the side of the road. If we didn’t have that mentality, then the roads would be littered with bodies, making journeys, especially on mopeds, hazardous.”
“I used to do that as well,” Pickle spoke up.
“It’s just one body,” said Vince.
“True,” said Drake, as Pickle stopped the van and pulled up the handbrake. “But one body turns into two ... and so on. Don’t get me wrong; with lack of decent water, soap, and crap sanitation ... you don’t want my guys touching dead bodies. It’s not healthy, but needs must.”
Drake sat inbetween the two men and squeezed past Vince to get out. Once he was out, he made the ten-yard walk over to the body, scaring off the birds.
Drake bent down and grabbed the man’s head and lifted it up to have a better look. He looked dishevelled, had a full overgrown beard, and looked like he hadn’t been dead long. He checked his body for any kind of injuries that he could have sustained to explain his death, but there was nothing.
“Poor cunt,” Drake moaned, and then released the man’s hair.
He grabbed his trousers and dragged him to the side of the road. He checked his pockets and pulled out a crumpled photograph and opened it out. It was a picture of the man with his female partner, he guessed, and a young boy that must have been his son. It looked like they were abroad, possibly Spain. They were sitting on a bench, on a promenade, and there were shops behind them, and in the right corner of the photograph Drake could see the Tabacos sign in yellow lettering with a brown background. He raised a smile and it took him back to his own holidays he had with Coral, when it was just the two of them.
They would sleep in, eat and drink too much, then go back to bed in the afternoon for a nap, then get up and eat and drink once more and have a late boozy night. Sometimes they would lie on the sun loungers and fall asleep by the pool, but that had to change when their son came along.
A snap of a branch could be heard behind him and Drake snapped out of his daydreaming.
Two of the dead staggered out of the trees to his left, and one tripped over the body and fell flat on his face. The other was a female and an unarmed Drake was relaxed and pushed the advancing female back.
She staggered backwards and fell over, cracking her head on the tarmac, and Drake walked over and brought his boot over her head and finished her off.
The remaining one staggered to his feet and Drake grabbed it by the neck and ran with it, smacking its head off the tree. The back of the skull caved in and the Snatcher fell to the floor in a heap once Drake let it go.
He looked around and decided to head back to the prison van. He opened the passenger door and could see that Vince had shifted along to the middle. He got in and told Pickle to drive.
“That guy didn’t have a mark on him,” Drake spoke, as Pickle went through the gears.
“No?” Vince remarked. “Not a scratch?”
Drake shook his head. “Must have been a heart attack or an aneurysm ... or something.”
“Poor Brad,” Vince said.
“Brad?”
“That was Brad Pitt,” said Pickle, and decided to explain. “We recognised his face when yer lifted his head up.”
“Who?” Drake was confused.
“Bradley Pitcher. A man we met on the road when we were out looking for Craig and Stephen last week.” Pickle decided to stop there. All Drake knew about Craig’s demise was that he and Stephen fell into a ditch and the dead fell in. Stephen was lucky. Craig wasn’t. He didn’t know about them being helped out by Paul Dickson, who put down most of the dead on ground level and helped Stephen out of the ditch.
Although Pickle was convinced that Paul Dickson was now far away, if Drake found out the real story then they’d be a search for the man that was hated in most parts of Drake’s camp, but was a hero at the time for the Colwyn residents.
“Five minutes and we’ll be back,” Drake moaned and looked out of the window for the rest of the journey that was made in silence.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Karen headed towards the gate and could see Findlay, who usually guarded the gate during the day. He smiled as he saw her coming over and asked what was happening.
“Not a lot.”
He
then fired another query at her. “Has anybody set up a perimeter for the hens yet?”
Karen shook her head. “Pickle said that there was no point, as they weren’t entirely sure if they’ll be anything there. We best wait until they return with anything.”
“If they do get any, I think Drake wants them thrown into the shed,” Findlay remarked.
“Thrown into the shed?”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“I don’t think it’s good for them to be stuck indoors all day.”
Findlay started laughing and said, “Oh, don’t tell me you’re one of those animal activists.”
“Of course not.”
“Then what are you on about?”
“If they’re less distressed, then they should produce more eggs. I read it somewhere.”
Findlay could see Darren pushing Stephen Rowley in a wheelchair and it looked like they were heading over to them. The ground was uneven and it appeared that Darren was struggling to move the thing.
Karen turned and saw the two of them and asked if they were okay.
“Still in pain, chap,” Stephen was the first to respond, “if that’s what you mean.”
“Are you his babysitter for today?” she asked Darren.
“Something like that.” He groaned and rolled his eyes.
“Gonna have to reduce the painkillers,” Karen said to Stephen.
“Again?”
“You’re healing nicely, slowly, and I don’t want you relying on them. Also, those things don’t grow on trees, especially these days.”
“What are you up to?” Darren asked, and flushed a little when his eyes met Karen’s, trying to forget the embarrassing incident from earlier.
“Just hanging out,” Findlay answered, although his question was for Karen.
“We’re bored out of our tree,” Karen admitted.
She looked around and held out her hand. The place looked abandoned, apart from the guards that were spread out by the wall.
Karen looked up and could see the heavens darkening with the black clouds emerging.
Snatchers (Book 14): The Dead Don't Hate Page 8
