Snatchers (Book 9): The Dead Don't Scream (8 page)

Chapter Fifteen

The husband and wife shivered in their tent with fear, and did their best to keep their noise levels down. In the darkness, in their four-man tent, they cuddled one another, kneeling up in the middle of it. It had been many minutes since they heard the first screams on the field, which was followed by the sound of distressed livestock.

When the husband heard the first scream, he'd unzipped and popped his head out to witness a massacre on the field. As his head was out, the field lit up due to an explosion further up, and he could see clearly that people were dying, livestock fleeing and the dead attacking anything that moved. Engulfed with panic, he'd put his head back inside the tent, zipped it up and prayed that he and his partner would be left alone.

It had been a long seven minutes since the explosion, and even though he knew that the peak of the massacre on the field had been and gone, he knew there were still some of those dead freaks out there.

"Do you think it's clear?" his wife asked softly with a shiver, breaking away from their embrace.

How the fuck should he know? He'd been next to his wife for the last seven minutes. Instead of responding with anger to his wife's query, he gulped and shook his head, which she could just about see in the darkness.

He had to remind himself that she was petrified—they were
both
petrified, and he hadn't heard the noise of dragging feet for a while.

Maybe they had gone. Maybe the coast was clear.

He leaned over to kiss his wife on the forehead.

"I'll just go and check," he said quietly. "If it's clear, we'll make a run for it to the Lea Hall building. There should be some guards there."

"Probably not there anymore," she sighed in defeat.

Ignoring her negative comment, he crawled over to the end of the tent and reached for the zip once again. He undid the zip and peered out.

His partner asked, "Anything?"

He turned around and shook his head.

"Are you sure?"

He nodded. "I'm sure."

"You didn't look out for very long."

He sighed and was about to take another look, but she screamed out as a rotten hand from outside grabbed at his throat, and the diseased mouth that belonged to the hideous face of a creature tore his right cheek away. He yelled out and took another bite to his ear, and now more came stumbling towards the tent and began to circle it.

Seven of them, from outside, fell on top of the tent and made light work of tearing through it. By the time the woman had been bitten, her husband had already been eviscerated. She never managed to witness her husband's slow death in full, as hands from behind her grabbed at her face and ripped her skin away, whilst another beast tore into her throat.

*

Gillian Hardcastle glared out of her bedroom window with her teary, blurry eyes and witnessed many dozens of the dead walking through Sandy Lane, through Hill Street and down into the front gardens.

She ran to the back of her house, and looked outside the other bedroom window. She opened the window and could hear the dead in the back gardens. She couldn't see them, it was pitch black, and the only reason the dead could clearly be seen on Sandy Lane was because of the light that the burning tanker was providing.

She returned back to her bedroom and cried as more seemed to be appearing, and it didn't take a genius to realise that the burning tanker wasn't helping.

She dropped to her knees, put her palms together and began to pray.

She hadn't prayed in a while, and wasn't too sure there was a God to pray to. If her prayers weren't going to be answered, she had a bottle of painkillers in her medicine cabinet that could take her away from this nightmare.

*

Tears rained down Henry Winter's cheeks as he could see the dead along the road, in their mass numbers. The only positive about this whole dire situation was that it was just he and his wife that were in the house. His three offsprings weren't children anymore, and had flown the nest many years ago.

His two sons were in their late twenties. They had been living in London for the last ten years and had jobs in retail. He and his wife hadn't heard from them for seven weeks. They were in contact for the first week of the crisis, but after that they both couldn't be reached. He and his wife feared the worst. Henry's daughter was twenty-two and had been working as a rep in Tenerife. He had no idea how bad the crisis was in that part of the world, and only hoped, especially with Tenerife being a Spanish island, that it had been untouched by the infection.

He continued to glare out, and saw their numbers grow so much that Sandy Lane looked something like the start of a marathon with the amount of dead that were there.

They were fucked. They were completely fucked.

Nobody could get them out of this mess, and he could see that some of those fiends were heading into front gardens and mooching around and slapping on windows.

Henry could see that the house next door had been breached and heard the window of the living room smash. He had no idea why they were trying the place. Nobody had lived there for two months. Maybe it was accidental. Maybe it was just the sheer numbers of the dead that slowly forced the glass to break once they were pressed up against it.

His house was going to be next. He was convinced of it.

His wife walked in. She had her brown dressing gown on and was shaking with fear. Her rotund figure approached her husband and she asked, "Has it got any better?"

He shook his head.

There was no point in sugar-coating the situation.

He urged her to take a look for herself. When she did, she placed her hand over her mouth and sobbed, falling to the floor.

In the first week, they hid in their home for days until the place was cleared up by volunteers, and even though the scene outside was bad, back in the first week, this was a lot worse.

Henry bent down to comfort his wife, but she was beyond comforting. She slapped him away, hurting his feelings, and screamed, "We should have gone in the first week! We should have fled when we had the chance!"

"It was too dangerous in the first week." Henry was now in tears and sat down next to his wife. "We wouldn't have survived out there. We would have been dead within a week."

She looked up at him with her heartbroken face and said, "I can't do this."

They both jumped when they heard glass shatter, followed by a thud that came from downstairs, and both looked at one another with fright in their eyes. Henry smiled thinly at his wife and caressed her cheek. He then leaned over and kissed her on the head, stood to his feet and left the room. She asked where he was going, but he never answered.

He returned, holding a sawn-off shotgun and she gasped, "What are you doing with that? Aren't you supposed to hand them in at the Lea Hall building after your shift?"

He never gave her an answer.

He gazed at his wife and said, "I love you," before blasting her in the chest, killing her instantly. Then, with no hesitation, he turned the gun on himself, placed both barrels under his chin and squeezed the trigger.

Chapter Sixteen

Holding a knife, Lee James shivered with fright as he hypnotically gazed at the same species of beings that had taken away his family. He had been in situations before where there had been dozens to cope with, when out on runs, but his confidence was always high because of the good team he would have around him. He was no coward, but he still got scared.

This was one of those moments. He had never seen so many.

He could see from his bedroom window, that looked onto Sandy Lane, that although the burning tanker had attracted them from afar, they were aware that it was of no use to them and were moving away from the burning vehicle and towards the houses on the main road. Because there were so many, a lot were going into Hill Street, through to the back gardens, and some were being pushed by the ones from behind through the living room windows of the houses on Sandy Lane.

Still holding his knife, Lee went to the back bedroom that overlooked his back garden. It was dark, but for now it seemed clear of those things. He knew that if he ran over the garden and climbed the fence, he'd be in Cross Road. That was where they parked their vehicles, and he had the keys for the Corsa. The pickup was used more than any other vehicle, and the keys for that vehicle was always left inside it. He already had the keys to the Corsa, so it would be selfish to take the pickup. Somebody else may need that.

He deliberated on what to do. If he left, he'd be leaving people behind to die, but at least
he'd
still be alive. He knew that if he fled, he would never be able to show his face again. If he left, that was it. He was on his own.

He paced the floor, heart beating out of his chest, undecided on what to do. A shatter of glass from a house next door to him had made his mind up. He put his coat on, put the knife into his pocket and ran downstairs.

The plan?

The plan was to take a car, the Corsa, then drive to the end of Burnthill Lane. Once he had reached Burnthill Lane, he would get out of the vehicle and take the HGV, if it was still there. Maybe the guards that were at the barrier had already fled with the lorry. If the lorry was missing, he would continue in the Corsa.

"Ah, fuck it!"

As far as Lee was concerned, it was now every man for himself. He hadn't come this far to die. It was a selfish act on his part, if he did indeed take the lorry, but he wanted to live, even if that meant putting others in danger.

He opened the back door that led out onto the garden and took his already-packed bag of supplies and threw it over his shoulder.

He was leaving.

*

Bentley Drummle had no choice in the matter. He was still out in the open and was totally exposed. He needed refuge. He was at Burnthill Lane, the road behind Sandy Lane, and needed to get away before the dead reached this part of the camp, but didn't want to inconvenience any of the frightened residents.

A lot of houses were empty, and he decided on breaking into the one at 12 Burnthill Lane. It was where Jimmy Mac used to stay, but with him dead and his son at the Pilkington's residence, it had been left temporarily abandoned. If he needed to stay at one of these houses for a few days, he'd rather stay at one that had solar panels.

Bentley decided to go round the back and see if he could get through the back door, rather than kicking in the front, and hesitantly went down a path that ran by the side of the house and peered into the dark back garden. He couldn't see much, but he felt that it was clear.

He crept to the back and tried the door. It had been locked. Most houses were left open, but this one had been locked the day that Jimmy Mac had died, when the bitten James McDonald was put out of his misery by Sheryl. Occasionally the odd resident would enter the place, with permission, to use the facilities Jimmy Mac used to have.

Bentley's ears then pricked up when he heard the sound of running along the road at the front of the house.
The Dead Don't Run. Do they?

He grabbed his gun with both hands and went back to the front. He peered around the corner of the house as the slapping became louder. He then saw Rick Morgan, running, and looking behind him every second.

"Rick. Over here." Bentley waved at him.

Rick headed in Bentley's direction and both men went round the back.

"I hope you've got a key for this place," Rick panted, engulfed in panic, "because they're coming."

"Well, I haven't."

Bentley kicked the back door in on his first attempt. A huffing Rick was the first to run in. Bentley stepped inside, and went into the living room to look for furniture to barricade the door that now had a broken lock. Rick ran straight upstairs, but Bentley was unbothered by this. This had been the most frightening experience since he woke up to find his cabin awash with the dead, when he lost Laura, so he didn't blame Rick for his cowardly actions. It was the way he was. Bentley accepted that.

Once a few chairs were stacked against the door, Bentley picked up the shotgun and went to the first floor to meet up with Rick. He called out Rick's name twice before the thirty-five-year-old told Bentley where he was. Bentley went into the main bedroom and could see Rick sitting on the bed, shivering. "Where's your gun?" asked Bentley.

"Dropped it. Only have a knife on me." Rick shuddered with fright and said further, with a cry, "I'm sorry I ran off earlier. I just panicked."

"Forget it."

"There's more coming in from the Globe Island."

"What?" Bentley looked astounded. "They're managing to get by the HGV? Are they crawling under it?"

Rick shook his head. "I saw The Pilkington family, with David McDonald, take the HGV. The guards weren't there. They must have abandoned their posts. I could see the lorry by the railway bridge was also not there."

"Shit." Bentley paused for a few seconds, his eyes wide with surprise. "So that's why there's fucking loads of them. There are no barriers anymore."

"Yep. And with the burning tanker..." Rick was close to tears and asked Bentley, "What do we do now?"

"We do what everyone else should be doing, the ones that are alive." Bentley rubbed his hand in exasperation and put his shotgun against the wall of the room. "We sit tight."