Snatchers (Book 7): The Dead Don't Yield (17 page)

Chapter Thirty Six

Theodore Davidson, Paul Frederick and Johnny Wilson slept in The Spode Cottage soundlessly. The place was big enough for a room each, and the three men were quite relaxed, despite what had happened back at Cardboard Hill. Having a similar incident
twice
was something that wouldn't happen, the men were sure of it. The jeep was parked behind the back of The Spode Cottage and all three noticed caravans when they turned up, but were too tired to check them out.

Now they were outside, awake, and had a light breakfast and some liquid, thanks to the stuff in their bags. Bear ran his tongue across his teeth. They were in desperate need of a clean.

"So what's the plan, Bear?" Willie was the first to speak. "Are we gonna stay here for a couple of nights?"

"Maybe." The huge man looked around the caravan park. It looked deserted. Whoever used to live here had fled. "We need to check the place out first." He placed his hands on his hips and took a few steps forwards before stopping. "We can stay here for a couple of nights, maybe longer. Although I don't like the location."

Frederick asked, "What's wrong with it?"

"It's a bit exposed. We could wake up one morning and find this place crawling with those things."

"There's quite a few caravans, Bear." Willie said with his mouthful, chewing on a breakfast bar. "You want me and Frederick to check them out?"

Bear never verbally answered Willie's query, but nodded the once.

Both Frederick and Willie took out their baseball bats.

"I'll start at the back of the camp," Bear spoke up, breaking his silence. "Check each caravan for safety first. Then see if any water or food has been left behind."

Said Willie, "We're okay for now."

"You can never have enough." Bear felt for the handle of his kukri to feel if it was still there, then began to stroll to the back of the place, heading his six-four frame towards a large hedge that surrounded most of the campsite. He walked past a burnt-out caravan and was unbothered by this; he then pulled out his blade and once he had passed the last lot of caravans he could see three graves near the corner of the hedge. He walked closer and could see one of them had a cross with a multi-coloured bracelet that had been placed on it.

He turned around and could see the first caravan that he was going to check. It was going to be a mundane affair, but it needed to be done if the three of them wanted to be completely relaxed, if that at all was possible.

The Bear had a glance at the hedge and then headed for the first caravan and kicked it open unnecessarily, as the door was already unlocked. He took a step inside and kept his kukri in his hand, ready for anything. He checked the toilet and the two bedrooms. It was empty.

He left the place and went to the next one. The results were the same.

Before going into his third he could see his two colleagues, in the distance, leaving a caravan. He bellowed, "Anything?"

Both Frederick and Willie shook their heads and he proceeded to the next one. It appeared that the whole site was lacking in human life.

Still holding the blade in his right hand, Bear stepped inside the caravan and scanned the living room. Chairs had been knocked over, and it appeared to him that the people who used to live here had left in a hurry.

He made a quick check in the two bedrooms and decided to leave, but something stopped his boots from leaving the place altogether. He had no idea what it was that he heard. It sounded like breathing. He definitely heard
something
.

With no hesitation he opened the bathroom door to see a young woman, sitting on the floor, holding onto a boy. The young blonde mother was in her twenties and had her hand over her son's mouth, stopping him from making any sudden noises. The little boy looked no older than four. He was a cute thing, like his mother, and had brown eyes and light brown hair.

Both mother and child shook when they saw this mammoth of a man standing over them, blade in his hand.

"You on your own?" he asked the woman.

She removed her hand from her boy's mouth, rubbed her child's head and nodded.

"Was this yours?" Bear was referring to the caravan.

She shook her head and shivered with fear. Her boy then began to cry and put his head into his mother's chest.

Bear fired another query at the woman. "How long have you been here?"

"Two days." She had spoken at last, and Bear winced as the child's sobbing became more raucous.

He put his blade away, maybe that was scaring the child, and said to the woman, "Do me a favour, will you?"

"Anything."

"Shut that kid up. He's starting to get on my fucking nerves."

She tried to shush him, but the harder she tried the more he screamed. He seemed to be getting worse.

"Look, you can stay for a few days," Bear pointed at the infant, "but I'm not listening to that every day. He'll attract those things."

"I'm sorry," she cried, then took a strange glance to her right, towards the cupboard where the old boiler was situated. "He'll calm down. I promise."

Bear took a step back and placed his hand on the handle of his blade. Why was she looking at that cupboard?

"I'll ask you one more time." Bear crouched down so that he was eye-level with the sitting woman. "Are you on your own?"

She nodded.

"There's nobody else here?"

She shook her head, tears streaming down her face, and she took another glance at the cupboard once more.

Bear snarled quietly, "You better not be lying to me."

"I'm not," she cried, still hugging her hysterical boy.

"Okay." The Bear then crept over to the cupboard that she had been looking at and quickly opened the door. A man came out swinging a bat, catching Bear on the shoulder, and the guy was then given a punch to his stomach for his troubles. The man fell to the floor, dropping the bat, and was now on all fours, coughing and spluttering.

Bear turned to the woman and yelled with fury, "You told me you was on your own! You lied to me, you fucking cunt!"

"I'm sorry!" she screamed, making her child even more hysterical, tears streaming down his flushed cheeks.

"It's not her fault." The man began to speak while gasping at the same time. Bear assumed that the male was the partner of the woman and the father of the boy. "We saw you outside. We thought that if you came in, you'd try to harm us like the last lot. When I saw you heading towards the caravan I told her to hide, while I was going to strike out."

"Please," the woman begged. "We're good people."

"You said:
The last lot
." Bear gazed at the man. "What do you mean?"

The man tried to explain, "A few weeks ago we were attacked by a couple of men, in our own house. I managed to fight them off before we left in our car."

Bear looked to be calming down and puffed out a breath, making the two adults breathe a little sigh of relief.

"Nevertheless," Bear bent down and picked up the bat that the man was going to use to batter him, and tucked it under his left arm. "You still fucking lied to me." He pointed at the woman menacingly.

She cried, "I was scared."

He heard a noise to the side of him, then caught something in the corner of his eye. He grabbed the wrist of the now standing man and could see he was holding a pocket knife. The small blade was inches away from penetrating Bear's neck.

Bear twisted the man's wrist, making him scream and fall to his knees, and took the knife off of him. "Even now you try and fucking harm me!"

"I'm sorry," the man pleaded. "I wasn't thinking."

"You can save your sorrys." Bear grabbed the man' s hair, yanked his head back and stabbed him in the right eye with his own pocket knife. The man screamed out, but the screaming didn't last long, as Bear took the bat from under his arm with his right hand. He brought down the baseball bat and smashed his brains in with four strikes to the head.

He wiped specks of the man's blood off his face with his sleeve, threw the bat across the room and went into the bathroom and grabbed the mother. She dropped her screaming little boy and he threw her against the wall of the toilet; he grabbed the boy and threw him out of the room, making the poor thing yelp as he hit the ground. He went over to the boy and felt the woman jump on top of him, punching him in the back, screaming at the man to leave her son alone, but her pleading had fallen on deaf ears.

Engulfed in rage, he threw the woman into the wall and gave her two punches to the stomach. He then grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the couch. He went back over to the sobbing child and grabbed the bat that had taken the man's life and ended the child's with one smack to the side of the head.

Dropping the bat, he went over to the hysterical woman and grabbed her by the neck, punching her in the back. She collapsed to the couch and was lying on her front. She looked to the side and could see her partner and child lying on the floor, motionless...dead, and blood was pooled around them on the laminate floor.

As soon as her eyes clocked this, she decided to give up.

Even if she could get out of this situation alive, what was going to be the point in living anymore? She had lost everything.

She tried to switch off from reality and tried to ignore the big man clambering on top of her and unbuckling his trousers. He pulled his trousers down to his ankles and hers were ripped off with no struggle. He also ripped her underwear off with no struggle, and he raped her with no fight back. She could feel him inside of her; tears fell from her eyes as his grunting became more frantic. She knew he was near, and was sure that once he was finished with her she was going to die.

As his groaning and gyrating became more frantic, she closed her eyes and winced when he made the inevitable sound that most men make once they've ejaculated.

She could feel his heavy frame getting off her and could hear him doing up his trousers. She then heard a couple of footsteps moving away from her, then returning, coming her way. She never made a sound once he grabbed the back of her hair and pulled her head back.

She bravely closed her eyes and felt the cold steel drag across her throat.

She was dead in seconds.

Chapter Thirty Seven

His idea of going to the woods was thwarted since he had lost his hand, and opted to stay where there were houses which provided some food and, more importantly, painkillers.

The pain was still there, but at least he had managed to find some bathwater in the house that he had broken into the evening before. It appeared that the owner of the house had fled in the early days. There was no car on the drive when he broke in, no barricade by the front door, the kitchen cupboards had been emptied and clothes had been taken from the bedroom cupboards. The bath had been filled, which told the eighteen-year-old that the owner may have hung around for a few days before deciding to take flight.

The exhausted young man took a look at his bloody stump, where his left hand used to be, wrapped in a fresh towel, and began to cry. How did it come to this?

He didn't feel as weak as he did before with the blood loss, but he still didn't feel right.

He clambered down the stairs to have a change of scenery and decided that it was time to move on. Despite hydrating himself the house offered no food, so there didn't seem much point hanging around. He left the house, once he could see outside that it was clear, and decided to check the last house on the Queensway road, at the entrance/exit to the estate. Thankfully the estate was clear, unlike how it was in the first weeks, and the teenager walked slowly, still on high alert in case anything dangerous was to appear.

He tried the front door of the place on the Queensway road and was surprised that it opened. No barricade was present, and he came to the conclusion that this was another set of people that decided to flee instead of doing what the media had instructed them to do.

He closed the door behind him once he was in the reception area, and went straight to the kitchen. He could see a set of knives and pulled out the biggest one—the 'psycho knife', as he would call it.

He went through the cupboards and sighed with exasperation that they were bare. He checked the defunct fridge and slammed it shut once his eyes could see that it was also empty.

"Bastard!"

He was getting hungry, and knew that in a day or so he'd be starving.

He left the house and ventured outside, holding the big knife, and made the short walk to a shop and had a look inside. The window was smashed and stained with blood, and the shop itself was too dangerous and dusky to enter.

His eyes examined the area around him and could see up a steep road, called Coppice Road, that a ghoul was stumbling towards him. He knew the pest would try and follow him wherever he went, but the danger was minimal as far as he was concerned. It was only one! He could handle one of them, even with his weakness and a hand missing. It was when they were in groups they were a problem.

He waited for the ghoul to approach him; his heart rate was elevated, but this problem should be easy to sort out as it was something he had done before.

As the creature was a couple of yards away it raised its hands to attack the boy, but the teenager took a step to the side, completely fooling the beast, and stabbed it through the eye. It fell and the young boy retrieved his knife and put it into his pocket. He reached the end of the Queensway road and turned left onto Sandy Lane.

The teenager staggered along the road and looked around. It had been months since he had ventured this far. He didn't know if heading towards the town centre was such a good idea, but he was desperate. He made a decision to check on some of the houses on Sandy Lane, a place he hadn't been to since the apocalypse started, before heading into town.

His tired feet scraped and dragged across the concrete pavement and his head was down. He was exhausted and close to tears. He took a quick glance at his mutilated left arm and wondered if this nightmare was ever going to end. He continued with his heavy legs and his head remained lowered, unaware that he was near the railway bridge, approaching a barrier.

He lifted his head once he heard a voice call out, "I've got it."

*

"The trouble with women," Daniel Badcock explained, "is that they're too obsessed with the way they look. Even now, people like Gillian and the other girls in Burnthill Lane are still plucking their eyebrows, trying to get hold of a razor to shave their legs. We even had one woman come to the Lea Hall building to see if we had any face cream. I mean: it's the end of the world, almost, so who cares?"

Rick Morgan scratched his head and said, "Some of the men still shave, if they can. And you're one of them."

Daniel said defensively, "I still shave because a beard itches the hell out of my face. I don't do it for vanity."

"Sheryl's not vain."

"No, she's not." Daniel began to laugh. "Sheryl's a lot of things, but she certainly ain't vain."

"What do you think of her?"

"Who? Sheryl?"

Rick Morgan nodded, "She seems a bit of a bright horse."

"You mean,
dark
horse."

"That as well." Rick nodded with a straight face.

"She's alright, once you get to know her, but she does keep her cards pretty close to her chest."

"She's got a nice body." Rick looked all dreamy and a daft smile emerged under his nose.

"So you have a soft spot for our Sheryl?"

"Kind of. But she's too scary for me."

Daniel laughed, "She's too scary for most men. Don't worry about it."

Rick raised a smile after Daniel's comment, turned his head, facing out and screwed his eyes. He pointed up ahead and patted Daniel's shoulder to get his attention. "Haven't seen one of them on this side of the barrier for days."

Daniel turned and looked. He smiled as he saw a lone ghoul staggering towards the barrier, and he thought about how Karen had removed two the other day, by the Globe Island barrier, making Nicholas Burgess look like a fool.

Daniel never hesitated and began to climb down with a bat in his hand.

Rick said sharply, "Where're you going? Wait till it comes to the barrier and get rid of it with the sawn-off."

"No chance." Daniel shook his head. "It's too loud and a waste of a cartridge, and there's no need anyway. It's just the one."

"But..."

Daniel held his hand up to silence Rick, and it worked.

He walked a few yards and could see that the creature had its head down and had no idea that Badcock's presence was close. Daniel gripped the bat tighter, ready to strike the creature, who wasn't very far away, and could see that it had a hand missing and even though its head was down he could tell it was a male. Daniel heard Rick whisper to Daniel to hurry up. Daniel pulled the bat back and said, "I've got it."

The creature lifted its head, and Daniel struck it...twice.