Snatchers: Volume Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 4-6) (24 page)

His adrenaline began to course through his veins even more so once he saw the woods thinning out and could see a country road up ahead. Once he got onto the road, he fell over and grazed his hands. His left hand had a finger missing and a slice on the palm, so the graze didn't bother him.

He stood up and brushed himself down. He looked around to gather his whereabouts and to get his breath back. The road was on a slight hill. Behind him was an incline, and where he was facing was the decline. He chose to stagger down the hill rather than upwards. It wasn't because it was easier; he knew where he was now.

He was certain he had been along this road before. There was a wooden pole on the left side of the road that he thought he had recognised before on one of his travels, but he couldn't remember if he had passed it when he used to drive the prison van. Maybe he had seen it when he and the rest of his group had managed to get a short-lived lift off the middle aged couple that were unfortunately shot by Average and his gang.

Wherever he was, Pickle was sure he was on the right road, but it all depended on whether his legs could make it.

He was certain that the road eventually lead to the Ash Tree Pub. And if it did, he was on the right road. The road to Vince's camp.

Chapter Forty Seven

Jack shot up, still fully-clothed from the day before, as the cold water hit him in the face. He stumbled off his bed and fell to the floor, hitting his head on the wall. "For fuck's sake!" he cried.

"Wakey, wakey, Jackie Boy." Vince stood holding the glass, and although it seemed like he was joking, Vince was quite angry that Jack had let himself get into such a mess.

"What was that for?"

"You're a mess, Slade. Get it together."

"They didn't get to the camp during the night?" asked Jack, rubbing his head.

"The girls?"

"Yeah." Jack stood on his fragile legs and plonked himself onto the side of the bed, his head in his hands.

"No, I told you. They're probably exhausted and got their heads down. I'm gonna get a truck and take a trip to the Ash Tree every half an hour to see if they're near, but I'm still not going into town for them. It's too dangerous." Vince took a disappointed look at Jack and sighed, "I don't think you'll be making the trip. Looks like you'll be on watch."

"No," protested Jack. "I want to go with you."

"You're in no condition. If we run into trouble, you'll be lucky if you have the energy to kill just
one
of those things, that's if you don't throw up first."

"Fuck off, I'm fine."

Vince nodded over to the empty bottle of Jack Daniels lying on the floor. "I suppose that's my fault really. Lesson learned. But fuck me, I didn't think you were gonna drink the
whole
bottle."

"I was bored." Jack then made a joke. "There isn't much on TV these days."

"Well, if you give a bottle of Jack Daniels to an alcoholic, he's not just gonna have a tipple, is he?"

"Give me a break, Vince. I've lost my son."

"I specifically told you to get an early night. Instead, you were still up till two in the morning, drinking that stuff."

Jack screwed his face in puzzlement. Was Vince having him watched? "How..?"

"One of the people complained to me this morning that you were singing
We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place
by The Animals at the top of your voice. Not cool, Jack."

"I don't remember that." Jack managed a smile.

"You're losing it, Slade. You keep on behaving like this, and I'll throw your arse off the camp. I don't care what you've been through."

"Just give me a second, and I'll get my socks on."

"Forget it. I need someone I can rely on."

"You can rely on me."

"Oh, really?" Vince took a step forward and crouched down to Jack's level and was almost nose-to-nose with him, the alcohol fumes coming from Jack was making Vince grimace. "You're a drunk, Jack. You probably were back in the old world. Just get yourself together and maybe I'll let you go on a run this afternoon once the girls have arrived."

Jack got to his feet and grabbed Vince by the shirt. Vince pushed him away, but Jack came bouncing back and both men fell on the bedroom floor, exchanging weak, pathetic blows that would make a street-fighter cringe with embarrassment.

Jack was now on top of Vince, and Vincent Kindl went to grab Jack by the throat to push him away, but instead he poked his left eye. "Ow, you fucker. You nearly poked my eye out."

"Get off me, you prick." Vince bellowed.

Jack then screwed his face and without warning, vomited all over Vince's T-shirt. The puke came out in a huge quantity, slapping its warm contents all over Vince and also spilling on the bedroom floor.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" cried Vince. "Slade, you fucking animal."

"Sorry." Jack slowly got off of Vince and apologised continuously. He was clearly embarrassed and tried to help Vince up. He held out his hand, but Vince angrily slapped it away.

"You need help, Jack." Vince was still lying on the floor, his head slightly raised to see the mess Jack had created. "This is low."

"I said I'm sorry."

"For God's sake." Vince looked down at the puke, trying not to breathe in the toxic fumes. "What the fuck have you been eating?"

"Here." Jack gave Vince his hand. "Let me pull you up."

Again, Vince slapped him away and got onto his feet by himself, the warm vomit falling off his shirt and hitting the carpet with a splat. He slowly took off his shirt that had the words "Do I Look Like I Give A Fuck?" emblazoned on the front, then screwed it up and tossed it in the corner of the room. He went into the cupboard and pulled out a creased red Puma round-neck T-shirt. He then turned to Jack. "You can come, but you need to sober the fuck up!"

Vince was quickly taken aback when Jack fell on to the bed and sobbed like a child. He slowly curled his body in the foetal position and moaned like a man who had a lot of pain eroding inside of him. His sobs touched, yet, embarrassed Vince, and he stood there with no idea what to do. He glared at the broken man, lying on the bed, and watched helplessly as Jack's face screwed up with the hurt while his tears ran down, staining the bed sheets.

Vince cleared his throat and slowly headed for the exit door out of the caravan. He reached for the handle and heard Jack cry out, "I miss my boy! I miss my Thomas!"

Vince's lower lip wobbled ever so slightly and he said softly, "Just come out when you're ready, Jack."

Vince Kindl stepped outside of the caravan and looked up to the sky. Weather-wise they had been spoilt, but it was going to turn eventually. There was something that Vince wasn't looking forward to: The winter.

The cold was bound to kill off a few of the elderly residents, and there wasn't enough generators and diesel to go around. He knew that desperate people would probably waste gas by putting on the gas rings on their cooker, so that was something else Vince needed to think about.

He took a stroll around the park and could see an old man called Reginald. He walked around the camp every morning. Vince knew that his residents were bored to tears, but they were alive. Vince had the occasional run to break up his day, but the elderly had very little for entertainment apart from chatter and old board games. One resident had batteries for their radio and would sometimes have four or five people around it while playing cards, but overall it was a monotonous existence.

Another elderly resident stopped Vince and told him that Bertha, the hog, had finally given birth to twelve piglets. "More bacon for us," Vince laughed falsely, and walked on and knocked on the door to one of the caravans.

A woman in her late forties opened the door and cried, "Vince, how are you?" Vince stepped inside and had a look around the place. The woman continued, "I heard about Paul and Claire. I'm really sorry about that. I really liked Claire."

"It was my responsibility." Vince nodded the once, acknowledging that he blamed himself for the incident.

"Nonsense. You're doing a great job." She smiled and rubbed his back. "We owe you everything." Her nose suddenly twitched, she lowered her eyebrows and asked, "Can you smell sick?"

Ignoring her query, he told the woman, "I need a favour."

"Anything." She gave off another grin, and Vince almost grimaced when he saw her mouthful of nicotine-stained teeth.

"I need you to clean up caravan number seven, while I go and get a multivitamin and a full-fat coke from the Spode Cottage."

"Whatever for?" she giggled. "Multivitamin? Full-fat coke? You don't have a hangover, do you?"

"No, not me. Someone else who's supposed to be going out with me soon."

"That's not very professional, Vince." The middle-aged woman was wearing a silver silky dressing gown, her hair was short and grey, and she sat down. "Didn't that happen a few weeks ago? And you sent him packing?"

"Yeah, and I heard he went to the Sandy Lane camp, making
them
stronger. Not my best idea. Anyway, I can't kick this guy out, even if I wanted to."

"Why ever not?"

"Because he's my friend, Rosemary," he said with zero hesitancy.

She smiled and crossed her legs. "Before I do that favour for you, do you want a quick cuppa?"

"No thanks." Vince then revealed a smirk and stated, "Actually, I think I might need another favour off you."

She shook her head at him and tightened the strap on her dressing gown. She got to her feet and slowly walked over to him, "I thought you would say that." She wagged her finger in his face, like his maths teacher, Mrs Hives, used to whenever he got a sum wrong.

Rosemary dropped to her knees, slowly unzipped Vince, then took him in her mouth.

Chapter Forty Eight

As soon as the two females went down the fire escape, they peered around the corner of the building to see if there were any sign of Snatchers. It was clear, and both Karen Bradley and Sharon Bailey strolled onto the main road with confidence, their machetes still tucked in their belts.

The girls were passing through the small town of Brereton and went by Ravenhill school. The roads of this area were predictably barren. There was no sign of any blood on the pavement or roads; there were no crashed cars, but every window of every house had their curtains drawn. The streets seemed to have avoided bloodshed, unlike its neighbouring town, and to Karen it just felt like that everybody had decided to have a lie-in, rather than it being in week four of the apocalypse.

"Eerie." Shaz was the first to speak, and although she never demonstrated this in verbal or body language, Karen agreed with her.

From out of the blue, Shaz blurted out, "I nearly slept with Jack last night."

"What?" Karen was astonished. She stopped walking and took a look at Shaz. Karen then continued to pace the pavement with Shaz alongside her and asked, "How?"

It took a while for Shaz to give Karen any kind of answer. "It was before we picked you up. We just got carried away and Vince walked in on us." Shaz bit her lower lip and added, "Vince said something..."

"What exactly?"

Avoiding Karen's question, Shaz asked one of her own. "Am I a bad person?"

Karen sighed as if she had no patience for the conversation that was taking place. "What are you talking about?"

"My husband and Spencer haven't even been dead a month, yet—"

"You're just lonely, who isn't?"

"But I—"

"Stop beating yourself up about it." Karen did a slow 360 degree turn, making sure everything was okay behind and from the sides. "But I'd stay away from Jack in future, if I were you. He's got his own problems."

"I know."

Shaz and Jack had both lost their sons, they had that in common, but two damaged souls forming a relationship was hardly the best idea in such a dangerous and unpredictable world.

Maybe he just wanted to empty his balls, Shaz thought, and began to get angry.
Fucking men!

Karen ruined Shaz's reflecting when she said, "And I wouldn't be too bothered about what Vince says. That guy's a sexual deviant. He'd suck his own cock, if he could. He'd have a go at either of us if he had the chance."

Shaz shuddered at the thought. "He said to me last night that he'd love to use my thighs as earmuffs."

Karen burst into hysterics and placed her hand over her mouth, as if she was embarrassed because it was something that Vince had said that had made her laugh. Her shoulders jiggled up and down with her continuous laughter, and eventually managed to compose herself. "He said that? Oh my god, what a creep." Karen tittered, "He told me back at the cabin that I should remember his name because I'll be screaming it one day. Arsehole." She then stopped giggling, and felt guilty for laughing so soon after Pickle's demise.

At the end of the road they went straight on, going through the park where they saw the first sign of the dead of this morning.

It was very surreal for Shaz.

Only six weeks ago, at the end of May, she had taken Spencer to this very same park on a Saturday. Now it had three dead males present, all dressed in football attire. It looked like they played for the local club as there was a pitch behind the park.

"It's okay." Karen said to Shaz, and pointed at the gates of the park. It was bolted shut, and the three things that were heading for the girls were locked in. "They're going nowhere."

Who could have done that? The caretaker? A football team-mate?

Once both girls reached the other end of the park, all they needed to do was turn right onto the main road and walk the two miles to the camp. Karen was beginning to get emotional thinking about Pickle, but she soon snapped out of it when her eyes clocked a group of young men, leaning against a wall.

"Relax." Shaz could see Karen reaching for the handle of the machete. "They could be harmless."

As they got nearer to the group of young men, they could see that not one of them looked older than eighteen. The tallest lad looked to be the leader, but Shaz and Karen had no idea why they were loitering around the street.

"Morning, ladies." The leader had brown hair, good-looking, and wasn't carrying a weapon of any kind, unlike his three colleagues who hung in the background, all carrying hammers. "We don't see many people out these days."

Shaz and Karen gave the young man a friendly nod and continued to walk by.

"Is that it?" He began to laugh. "Is that all you've gotta say?" He reached for Karen as she turned her head over her shoulder. She slapped his hand away, pulled out her machete, and pressed his groin with the tip of the weapon.

"Don't ever touch me or I'll take your balls off, son." Karen glared at the teenager with demonic eyes.

The young man was frozen with fear; his three friends were standing behind, hammers in hand, unsure what to do. The young man held up his hands. "I just wanted to know who you are and where you came from. Relax."

Shaz whispered in Karen's ear, "Don't you think you're overreacting a little?"

Karen removed the machete and tucked it back into her belt. "What are you doing hanging around here?"

The leader answered, "We live in that house." He pointed behind him. "We were just about to go into the town centre and see if there's anything to eat."

"You're all young men," Shaz spoke, pointing out the obvious. "Where's everybody else? Your parents?"

He turned around to look at his friends who all dropped their heads. "They're all dead." He pointed at the house. "That's my house. I used to go to school with these guys. My sister and my little brother are in there. He's only four."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Karen said, "but we need to be somewhere."

Both women turned to walk away, but were stopped in their tracks when a voice blurted out, "Wait a minute. I know you."

Karen looked round and could see one of the boys with a smile on his face, pointing at her. She assumed correctly that it was he that had spoken when her back was turned. He looked fifteen, covered in acne, and didn't seem a threat at all, even with the hammer in his hand. He stated, "You're Staff Nurse Bradley."

Confused, Karen asked, "And you are?"

"David Watkins." He held out his hand, but she never shook it.

Blushing, he pulled his hand away and stammered, "You cared for my dad six months ago, before he died. Simon Watkins. He was in for an operation. Died a few days later."

"MRSA." She nodded. She remembered him.

"You seemed different back then."

"I had less blood on me." Karen said with a straight face, and added, "I don't think I was carrying a machete either."

"No, I meant...you seem a lot different now, you seem darker."

"Aren't we all now?"

"Anyway." He lowered his head bashfully, realising he was still blushing. "Me and my mum never forgot about you. Thanks for everything."

"I was just doing my job."

"So are you girls from the Sandy Lane camp?" The leader asked, while David took a step back.

Both shook their heads. "We're...moving on," Shaz spoke, revealing very little. She didn't want to invite a bunch of people without Vince's permission. Maybe they would come back for them later.

The leader, who still hadn't introduced himself, said, "I remember them swarming around the garden on the Sunday morning. We never had the TV on, so we didn't know what they were. My mum was the first to go, then my dad ran out with a knife and was ripped apart, right in front of my eyes. Then us lot was on Facebook and met here, and—"

"Look, son," Karen interjected. "We've all got horror stories that'll curl your pubes, but we really need to go. Good luck with...living and stuff."

Shaz and Karen walked away and left the boys. Their walk was peaceful. Unlike the old world, there wasn't a person in sight up ahead, not a single groan of a vehicle's engine, and not even the sound of a dog barking.

Their walk continued for another two minutes. The two young women looked up ahead and could see an abandoned car. Shaz looked at Karen to see if she wanted to check it out.

As if she could read Shaz's face, Karen moaned, "I suppose we have to pass it anyway." Karen pulled out her machete, preparing for the unexpected.

As they gained closer they could see the back of the car more clearly and that the car was a red Ford. All windows were up, and covered in so much blood it was hard to see in at the side windows. Karen stepped to the front of the car and could see the front had severe damage, indicating to her that it had hit something, and
that
was probably the reason for it stopping.

She placed both palms of her hands on the bonnet and leaned over to get a better look through the windscreen. She could see one person, or thing, moving in the back.

Shaz was standing behind Karen and said, "Nothing for us here. Shall we go?"

Karen walked around the side of the car and put her left hand on the handle of the passenger door, her machete in her right, and before she pulled the door open, Shaz reminded her, "Remember what we said about taking a step back?"

"I know." Karen's face was apologetic, telling Shaz that she had already made her mind up that she was opening the door. "I think there's a child-Snatcher in there. It'd be wrong to leave it."

"It's dead. Start thinking about the one in there. The one that's living." Shaz pointed at Karen's stomach. Karen never responded, so Shaz yelled, "Wait! I'll do it. You stand over there." She pointed at the front of the car.

Shaz opened the passenger door with little hesitancy and almost threw up with the smell. She took a deep breath in, and held it as she took a look inside. There was a child inside, maybe five years old, and it looked like it had been abandoned for whatever reason. The child was dressed in white shorts and a Batman T-shirt, now heavily blood-stained, and its face was ashen and it snarled and gnashed at Shaz as it struggled to get out of the car. She took out her machete, and Karen looked away as Shaz put the thing out of its misery.

Karen remained where she was, eyes away from the scene, and Shaz tapped her on the shoulder. She was ready to go.

Both women walked along the main road. Karen took a peek to her right to see Shaz's face filled with sadness, tears in her eyes, and two specks of dark blood on the side of her cheek. Karen placed her arm around Shaz and both women comforted one another.