Snatchers (Book 3): The Dead Don't Cry (24 page)

Chapter Fifty

The truck slowly reversed back, giving the jeep just about enough room to squeeze through the gap that had been left. Once Jack had drove through the opening, he put his foot down and never looked back. There was no sign of Claire when he left, and he assumed she either wasn't told of his leaving, or she wasn't giving a shit.

Vince had one of his guys to check over the jeep to see if Jack had taken food and water with him before leaving, supplies that belonged to the camp. To Jack's credit, he had never stolen as much as a water bottle, and this impressed and surprised Vince. He wished he stayed, but he knew that Jack had a moral compass that wouldn't allow him to be as ruthless as the rest of them. In a certain way, Vince admired Jack's principles, but was convinced it was going to get him killed one day.

Jack was still a little drunk when he went over the brow of the hill, and looked in his rear-view mirror to see that the blockade and the camp was no longer in sight. He thought about Claire and that kiss.

Was Vince behind it?

Did Vince think that if Jack developed some kind of love interest he'd find it more difficult to leave?

Or was it for real?

Did Claire really like him?

Jack shrugged it off and bypassed The Ash Tree pub to his right and knew, looking at the sky, he was going to have to find a place to stay because the night wasn't far away. He decided that he would try and pull in on a country lane, away from a residential area and also away from the woods. He knew it'd be dangerous whatever he did, but if he left the keys dangling in the ignition and went to sleep and one or more of those things came to the jeep, Jack could get out of the danger area within seconds and drive somewhere else. The jeep was a tough vehicle, Jack had Johnny to thank for that, and could easily ram through many persistent ghouls if need be, which was something that had already been successfully proved.

With his crowbar sitting on the passenger seat, Jack veered left and went through a country lane that led into the small town of Brereton. Knowing that the alcohol could have an effect on his concentration, he drove at a steady twenty and looked at the fuel gauge.
Half a tank. Not bad.

This had been the first time he had been on this main road that led into the town of Rugeley, and the place, eerily, looked reasonably clear. There were no bodies strewn along the streets, no bloody limbs, crashed cars or burning properties.

It was all a little bizarre.

Jack made a decision and turned the jeep another left. The quiet, main road had given him goosebumps, and he wondered if it possessed hiding looters that were ready to strike, and
that
was the reason for the lack of life.

He was aware of two camps in the one town. There was Vince's and the Sandy Lane area, where the main road had been blocked off, probably to create a small village of their own like the one Vince was running. It wasn't inconceivable that Jack could be carjacked if he had kept on driving on the Brereton road, and these potential bandits could be members of the Sandy Lane camp.

The whole road could be some kind of trap. Or was he just being paranoid?

Going up a street, of name he had forgot, he came to a three-way road and drove by Ravenhill school and went straight on into an industrial estate where there used to be businesses, before people turned and began to eat one another.

He slowed the vehicle down and could see movement in the windows of a factory. The jeep came to a stop and Jack wondered if there were any kind people left in the world and, if there were, would they put him up for the night? Jack stepped out of the vehicle and walked round.

Apart from the factories to the right, the country road was surrounded by farmland. Jack took a few steps forward and before crossing the road, he took a gape to the left and right. Some habits were hard to break.

As soon as he reached the other side of the road, Jack heard a voice call out, "Don't fuckin' bother!"

Jack looked up at the factory window that appeared to be a paper recycling place, and saw five figures, some holding baseball bats. "Ye come in 'ere, an' we'll knock fuck out o' ye," the same voice warned.

"Charming," Jack muttered.

He turned on his heels and went back to the jeep. Before he could get in, he heard another voice call out from the window. "It's alright, mate. You can stay if you want. Just bring yourself and tha' beast to the side o' the factory, and we'll let you in."

Why the sudden change of heart, Jack thought.

He ignored the comment and went back into the vehicle. He drove away and smiled to himself. He had no idea if he was being mistrustful and that the second guy was being genuine. Was it the vehicle they were after?

"Fuckers," Jack mumbled. "Seeing the jeep probably had changed the groups' mind. They'd probably beat me half to death and take the vehicle."

Jack moved on and hit thirty as he drove around the windy lanes, and went past a farmhouse. He thought about stopping for a second, but decided to look for accommodation in the morning, when he had all day to do so. The sky was growing darker, and he guessed that in another hour it would be pitch black.

He turned left and the vehicle went up a steep road, and once he reached the top of the hill to a flat part of the road, Jack suddenly realised where he was. If he followed the lane for another two miles, he'd be entering the village of Hazelslade. He decided to head for Hednesford, as he knew of a place that was well hidden and away from the main road.

As he continued to drive along the road, he looked up to the spectacular site of Stile Cop. The huge hill was a beauty spot and one of the highest points in the area. He briefly remembered taking Kerry up there one night for a passion session, but their session was short-lived.

After two minutes, when he and Kerry were making love in the back seat of the car, Jack had realised that eyes were watching him, and saw two men and a woman looking into the vehicle. Their presence frightened the shit out of him and caused a tussle once he got out of the car, half-dressed. Unbeknown to Kerry and Jack, Stile Cop was a hot spot for dogging on an evening, but the naive pair had no idea.

His reminiscing came to a halt as he reached the crossroads. He reduced his speed and wanted to continue ahead to get to his destination, but a speeding car from nowhere came out from the right of the crossroads and smashed straight into the side of the vehicle.

The airbag failed to inflate in front of Jack's face, and the jeep halted once it had swerved to the left and hit a tree.

*

He had no idea where he was going, but knew that in a matter of hours, the Ford Focus would soon run out of petrol. He adjusted his glasses and winced when he pressed his foot down to use the foot pedal. His knee was still smarting from the assault a few day ago by the large man they called Pickle, who was with three others in the back off the pick-up truck. Even though the farm that he and his three colleagues were staying at was only another mile away, it scared him that he was gong to be staying on his own, now that the other three had been attacked.

He knew they were being greedy by going into the street for more supplies; they had enough back at the farm, but Gordon, his greasy, pony-tailed friend, convinced the leader of the small mob that the nearest populated place of Rugeley, the Pear Tree Estate, would be easy picking for them.

It was going perfectly; people hid in their houses and it was a simple task of walking in with little resistance, but it had suddenly gone pear-shaped. Gordon had made suggestions that once that particular street was cleaned out, they should search through the dozen or so more, before finally going back to the farm on a permanent basis.

He was as surprised as any of them when the huge man, that had fucked his knee up, had returned, and even more surprised when he was loading the car and saw that crazy bitch running across the road with a machete and then swiping at Gordon before hacking the arm off of his other friend. Panic had kicked in and he jumped into the Ford Focus and never looked back. He knew if any of this colleagues had survived and eventually found him, especially if it was Gordon, they'd kill him for sure. So was going back to the farm really the wise thing to do?

He went past Slitting Mill, turned left on the Hednesford road and headed for the Stile Cop road. He saw a burnt out Porsche to his left and as his car went up the massively steep road, he could see a few bodies to the side, near the grass bank, opposite the cemetery.

As the car got to the brow of the hill, he could see that down the road was littered with crushed bodies. "What the fuck happened here?"

He slowed down, turned left, and pulled into the Stile Cop beauty spot, and noticed that it wasn't much better there either. He got out off the car, hoping that this place could be a safe haven for one night, and stepped out onto the sandy floor. He was torn whether to go back to the farm or not, but he was in fear from his colleagues—if they were alive—that he had left in the lurch.

He looked around the beauty spot. People had been here. It was obvious.

There was a black patch on the ground where a fire or two had been lit, and he guessed that maybe a small gang had dwelled up here for a few days before moving on. But it wasn't the old fire that made him curious, it was the amount of bodies that were on the floor. He couldn't count how many altogether, but some had been shot in the cranium.

He shook his head and could not fathom what had happened up here. It appeared that nowhere was safe, and thought that maybe he should stay at the farm and stay awake, and just hope that none of his guys would turn up, especially that psycho, Gordon.

He heard a moan from the side of him as if one was still alive; he jumped with fright and jumped into the car once he saw at least three of the fifty-plus bodies, wriggling and trying to move along the sandy surface.

The car screeched out of the place and he closed his eyes when the Ford Focus ran over the deceased bodies lying on the tarmac, and once he had got by the last body, he decided to go straight across the crossroads and head for the farm. He looked over his shoulder to see if there was anything behind him, turned back round and breathed out a sigh of relief.

The last thing he saw, was the side of a black jeep that his car then collided with.

Chapter Fifty One

Once both exhausted girls had went by the football field, they walked into the street, both carrying bags. Karen made a joke that the remaining residents of this particular street must have been sick of the sights of her, but Shaz never responded to Karen's chat.

Shaz pointed to a house on the left and said, "I'd been staying in there for a bit. The house was empty when I turned up, and it has a cupboard full of clothes."

"Good." Karen nodded. "It'll be good to get some new clothes while we can. We've got detergent back at the cabin from the looting, but I feel a bit uncomfortable wasting water just to wash clothes. Seems a bit of a waste, especially if Wolf's water system packs up. It's not great as it is, and we'd have to end up using the stream in the woods."

Changing the subject, Shaz looked around and said, "There's always the option of staying in one of these houses, if you get sick of the cabin."

"There is, " Karen agreed, "but to be honest, that cabin is the safest we've been since this shit started to happen. Pickle's also paranoid about people in general. I mean, it's only been three weeks since the outbreak and we've come across
these
fucks," Karen pointed at the dead body of Wiry. He had eventually bled to death. "So what's it gonna be like in the long-term?"

"About what happened here," Shaz spoke up. "I was napping. If I could see you and your friend were in trouble, I would have helped earlier. It wasn't until the explosion—"

"That's okay." Karen smiled and patted Shaz's shoulder. She was liking this woman already. "You don't have to explain. Why should you have helped? You didn't even know who we were."

Karen scanned the street and noticed that the guy with the black, greasy hair with the cut face, was missing. After she had swiped his face with the machete, she became somewhat distracted with everything else that had been going on. The blood where he once lay was present, but he had disappeared somewhere.

They walked into the house and Karen took a look around the ground floor, the bag was hanging off her left shoulder. "How did you manage?"

Shaz replied, "Like everybody else; I used everything in the cupboards and rationed it."

"Clothes upstairs?" Karen had no idea why she asked such a silly question. Of course the clothes were upstairs.

"Bedroom," Shaz said. "I'll be up in a sec." Sharon took a walk into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of flat vimto from the cupboard and swallowed the whole lot down. She made an exaggerated
ah
sound, belched softly, and then made a decision to go upstairs and help Karen fill her bag.

Shaz looked around the place she had called 'home' for a few days, and thought about her own house. She had literally been on the run since she witnessed the macabre scene of her husband killing her child, and she had been hopping from one house to the next ever since.

The longevity of her stay always depended on how safe or unsafe she felt.

After the small invasion of the four bandits, as well as a few ghouls, Shaz felt that the stay in the street was unwise, and felt lucky to be offered to stay in such a place like the cabin, and was grateful to Pickle for asking her, even though it wasn't his place. She had remembered the cabin as a child when she used to play on Cardboard Hill, but back then children never went near it. To the kids it was either uninteresting to them, or they were too scared to approach it because the older children had filled their heads full of horror stories about the place.

Because it had been years since she had been up there, she was unsure the place still existed until Pickle gave her the invite. It had changed somewhat since her childhood, and the huge overgrown greenery and the fence that surrounded the area that prevented anyone from actually noticing the cabin, was never there before.

Shaz heard a thud coming from above her and assumed that Karen had already started picking out clothes. She turned and began to walk upstairs. She walked into the bathroom and had a wee. After wiping herself, she stepped back out of the bathroom and went into the master bedroom.

Her face was devoid of emotion; her eyes glared, but never blinked, and her body never flinched once she saw the cold steel pressing against Karen's throat.

The greasy-looking man had his left arm hooked around Karen's neck, and with his right hand he held the blade.

"Well, well, well," he said in a mocking voice. "I have the pleasure of two bitches for company."

The man had long, greasy hair, tied back. He looked like he needed a good wash, had a terrible smile inbetween all of his facial hair, and a huge cut to his face that now looked like it had stopped bleeding.

"So what did you come back for?" he snarled in Karen's ear. "To finish me off? More food?"

Karen winced once she smelt his breath and he had noticed this, and reacted by squeezing her throat tighter with his left arm as if he was insulted by her reaction. The blade was now pressed harder, drawing a little blood.

He growled down Karen's ear, "If it wasn't for you and your male friend, we'd be okay."

Karen responded, "It's greed that has caused you and your friend's downfall, not me. We just took from empty places, and not from people."

"Proper little girl scout, aren't you?" His anger produced spit to leave his mouth; some dribbled onto Karen and ran down her ear, but she never flinched. "You and your friend have fucked things up for me, good and proper."

Karen laughed mockingly, which Shaz thought was a brave—or maybe, stupid—thing to do, considering that the man she was mocking had a blade to her throat. "It's called karma. You set up a roadblock and gunned down a middle-aged couple because they didn't give you what you wanted. God knows what else you've done."

"Just trying to survive, darling." He then began to make Karen squirm a little by nibbling her ear. She was certain that this man was getting no sexual buzz from his actions; he was simply trying to press her buttons.

"What do you want?" Shaz asked, her fingers stroking the cleaver tucked in the back of her belt.

"You know what? I don't really know," he cackled, and looked at Shaz. "
You
can get out of here, darling. But this one is staying here with me. We have some unfinished business to take care of. Go on, leave!"

"I'm afraid I can't do that," announced Shaz.

He then moved the knife from Karen's throat and placed the blade against her cheek. "She's cut
me
, now it's my turn to cut
her
."

Karen remained motionless; she was scared, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of him knowing this. She could feel his breath on the back of her head and gave Shaz a wide-eyed look as if she was trying to communicate with the thirty-year-old.

Karen dropped her head a few inches, feigning tiredness, then quickly threw her head back and connected with Mangy's nose. He released a painful yelp, and she then stamped on his foot, speedily turned around and tried to prise the knife out of his clutches by grabbing his wrist with both off her hands. It became a struggle, until Shaz ran over and struck his wrist with her cleaver.

Mangy released an awful scream, and his disbelieving eyes grew like saucers once he could see his hand hanging off of his wrist, blood escaping plentifully onto the carpet.

"You stupid bitch!" he screamed, and continued to look at the damage to his hand.

Karen grabbed the bag off of the floor while the injured man remained on his knees in the corner, and she calmly began taking clothing items from the cupboard, while the injured man fell onto his back and writhed about.

"Any preference?" she called over to Shaz, over the male screams, but Shaz shook her head and just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Once the bag was filled, Karen threw it over her shoulder and told Shaz to fill hers. Then they were leaving.

Karen walked past her and opened the door. "You coming or not?"

Shaz filled her bag and then pointed at Mangy; he was still on the floor, sobbing with the pain. "What about him?"

"Leave him. He deserves everything he gets."