Snatchers (Book 3): The Dead Don't Cry (26 page)

Chapter Fifty Four

The smashed and crumpled vehicles had been stationary for the last half an hour, and the Vauxhall Corsa was smoking at the front. The man inside was unconscious, moaning a little, but the dashboard had been pushed and crushed so much, due to the impact, that a lot of debris had been inserted into his stomach and chest. The man was losing blood and was minutes away from death.

The other man, Jack Slade, wasn't wearing a seatbelt when the impact occurred. He had minor whiplash and had hit his head on the dashboard when the Corsa ploughed into the side of the black jeep. He had been unconscious, but was finally coming around.

For a moment, Jack thought he was waking up in his own bed. He looked around the inside off the jeep; his eyes then saw the state of the Vauxhall Corsa, and had noticed that both cars were sitting in the middle of the crossroads. To the right of him was Stile Cop beauty spot, Hazelslade was straight on, and the road to the left led to Longdon.

He then realised what had happened.

He realised that he wasn't at home anymore, and he was probably never going to see his home again. He understood that Thomas was deceased, and that the world had turned into an apocalyptic place.

His realisation had depressed him, but before he had any more time to dwell on this and burst into tears, a mixture of hideous and familiar moans and groans could be heard to the left of him.

A small group of the dead could be seen coming down the Longdon Road, the road to the left, and they clumsily progressed towards the two cars. Jack struggled to get out. He was beginning to think he was cursed every time he got behind the wheel of a vehicle.

When the outbreak first happened, he set off from Glasgow to Rugeley on the M6 and ended up crashing his Vauxhall Meriva when it got a flat. A jeep he was driving from the supermarket, after Gary's death, had been driven into a ditch when he was somewhat distracted by a set of ghouls. And now this!

The sight of the gang of the dead had given him a shot in the arm, and he suddenly perked up and began to try the doors of his vehicle. Neither one was budging, and he had no idea if this was due to the damage the vehicle had taken, or it was some kind of mechanical failure.

He then realised he had locked both doors once he had left the factory, just in case. He unlocked them both and tried the driver's side again. It still wasn't budging, and this time he was convinced that it was damage to the door that was causing this nefarious inconvenience.

He saw two of them go around the back of the Corsa, but the remaining seven surrounded
his
jeep. He tried to start the car but nothing occurred. It had died on him. He looked above him and could see the sunroof. It seemed the only way: Break through the sunroof; get on top of the jeep, and hopefully jump off without breaking his legs and being grabbed and ripped apart by these mindless, ravenous freaks, but he was too sore to move properly.

As they reached the jeep and began peering and clawing at the thick pane of glass on the driver's side door, Jack stared into the eyes of these things and was certain that the glass in the solid jeep was good enough and strong enough to hold them off. The problem was that they never gave up. It didn't matter how long he stayed in the vehicle, even if he had enough supplies for a week, they'd still be there, waiting for him to come out.

He had to think of a way to get out alive. But he couldn't think.

Suddenly, Jack could hear a roar of an engine from behind, but he couldn't twist his sore neck round to see who it was. He jumped in fright when he heard a thunderous blast, followed by the sight of blood and brain matter decorating the outside of the driver's side window.

What the fuck is going on?

Jack then heard another blast. He peered out of the window and saw a solitary creature to the left, fall, while most of its head left its body in a bloody violent way that he had seen before. It fell to the floor, practically headless.

Jack then heard a scuffle, and saw bodies continuing to fall to the left and he recognised the man straight away. He then gaped to the right, through his driver's bloody window, and noticed the blonde ponytail swinging as the female had approached the two creatures that were by the Corsa. She made light work of their demise with her machete and both had taken a blow each, the second ghoul's head had come off completely. He then watched her go over to the decapitated head and rammed the blade of the machete through its skull.

A month ago this scene would have horrified and repulsed Jack, but now he felt nothing. Although he was happy that his macabre episode had a happy ending, thanks to Vince and Claire, he was baffled how they knew where he was, unless this had been some kind of remarkable coincidence.

Once the conflict had finished, Vince leaned the shotgun against the car, opened the passenger door and peered in. He began to cackle, "Well, looks like we saved your life, Jackie boy. That's a blowjob you owe me."

Jack was confused, and began rubbing his sore head. "But how..?"

"One of my men saw the cars on the way back from a run. Claire had a feeling it could be you."

Jack was stunned and couldn't find his voice, although his bottom lip moved a little. "Thank you," Jack said wearily, obviously still a little concussed.

"Don't thank me," Vince sniffed. "It was Claire's idea. I was gonna let you be, considering you seem to think you're too good for us."

Claire walked over to the jeep and took a look inside. "You okay? How you feeling?"

Jack smiled. Despite his reservations of staying in the camp, he had a soft spot for Claire. "I think it's just a bit of bruising; neck's a bit sore though."

Sighed Vince, "Well, you two can play
hide the sausage
once we're back at the camp. I, for one, don't wanna be hanging about here for a minute longer." Vince's larking around began to cease and his face took on a more serious look. He held out his hand and said to Jack, "You're coming back with us. No arguments."

Jack nodded in agreement, and was beginning to feel like an idiot for leaving in the first place. He had been out on the road for under an hour, and already he had got himself into a life-threatening scenario that he was lucky to be leaving in one piece.

"What about him?" Claire pointed over to the dying man in the Vauxhall Corsa; he was crushed by the inside of his car, and wasn't far away from death itself.

Vince sniggered, "
He's
not coming back with us."

Claire shook her head at his dark sense of humour and asked, "What are we gonna do with him? We can't just leave him there. The poor man's dying."

Vince bent down and pulled out a blade from his sock. "I'll take care of him. This is only the second human I've killed, but the guy doesn't deserve to die like this."

"You can't do that," Claire protested. "That's sick."

Vince disagreed. "It's not sick. He's already dying. I'm doing him a favour. If you wanna see sick, put your thumb up your arse and one in your mouth, count to five, then switch thumbs. Now
that's
sick."

Vince walked away from Claire, smashed the driver's window with the butt of his shotgun and leaned in. The guy was a mess. The dashboard had crushed him, and his abdomen had been pierced and there was blood everywhere. The man looked at Vince with pleading eyes. Vince nodded at the man, took a hold of his blade and drew it across the man's throat, leaving him to bleed out.

*

"Where the hell have you two been?" was the first question Wolfgang Kindl threw at an exhausted Karen and Shaz. Wolf could see that they had ran into trouble, the evidence was all over their face and their clothes.

Karen and Shaz held up their bags and Bradley announced, "Got some clothes. Besides, we thought we'd be back by the time you and Pickle woke up. Wanted to surprise you."

Shaz slumped to the grass beside a fire that Wolf had just started. Karen placed the bag by the side of the cabin and did the same, sitting next to Shaz.

"Where's Pickle?" asked Karen.

"I think I heard him just wakening up," Wolf said. He went into the cabin and asked from the kitchen, "You girls hungry?"

They both replied with a 'yes' and Shaz asked what it was going to be.

"Gonna use those rolls you found. They're a bit stale, but a chicken breast and some relish should make it taste nice."

"I'll get up in a minute," Karen called back. "We're exhausted."

"No problem," Wolf said, feeling more relaxed now they had returned, but was still upset that they had walked off without telling anyone. "You can get the tea on with that stove."

Once Wolf began buttering the rolls in the kitchen, Shaz and Karen got to their feet and placed a cup in one of the buckets, and used the water in the cup to wash their face and remove any sprays of blood that were there. They both sat back down and Shaz looked over her shoulder to make sure there was nobody eavesdropping. Shaz leaned over to whisper to Karen. "About this sniper. Who on earth could that be?"

Karen was lost in thought. "Probably some guy who's escaped from the army. He's probably hiding out in one of the houses and saw our predicament, took pity on us, and used two bullets up to help us out." Karen began to snicker, simply because she was finding the 'sniper incident' more bizarre and surreal than the dead in the street trying to eat them. How messed up was that? "Best to keep it to ourselves for now."

Shaz was about to ask another question, but Karen shushed her as footsteps could be heard coming from the kitchen, followed by the main door opening.

A weary-looking Pickle exited the cabin and walked onto the garden. He greeted the girls and noticed the bag straight away. "Been shopping, I see." He shook his head in disappointment. "Wolf told me."

Changing the subject, and trying to avoid a lecture about going to the street without him, Karen questioned, "How's the finger?"

"Still missing."

Karen almost burst out laughing at the stupidity of her question. "I meant, how are you in general?"

"I'll live. My nose's sore as hell, and ma torso feels like it's been hit with a couple o' baseball bats."

"I couldn't imagine how sore that would be," Shaz said, pointing over to his missing finger.

Pickle smiled and spoke, "I think it's fair to say that it may keep me awake for a few nights. The pain comes in waves; at the moment it hurts like a bastard."

"Have a look in the bag." Shaz stood up on her aching feet and showed Pickle what was in it. "You better have a look now before it gets dark."

Pickle ruffled through the bag with his right hand, and eventually pulled out a pair of blue jeans and a black T-shirt.

"Ah, black," he spoke with sarcasm. "It seems to be the only colour I wear these days."

Karen said, "There's plenty of underwear at the bottom of the bag as well."

Pickle looked at the girls and his face was full of emotion. Karen turned around and peered over her shoulder. "For fuck's sake, Harry Branston, you're not gonna cry, are you?"

Pickle cleared his throat. "Course not." The topic was quickly changed and Pickle asked Karen, "Any problems back at the street?"

"No." Karen shook her head and gave Shaz a glance. "No problems at all."

"This is the last time we go for a while, okay?"

Karen laughed and began picking at a bit of dry skin on the end of her nose. "We keep on saying that."

"I'm serious. And I don't want yer going down there on yer own again."

"I wasn't on my own, I was with Shaz."

"Yer know what I mean."

Karen seemed annoyed by Pickle's mollycoddling, and was a little embarrassed with Shaz being present. "Look, you went on your own when I was unwell. Just because I don't have a dick, doesn't mean I can't fight. And you should know that by now."

Shaz felt an unstoppable smirk stretching across her face, and put her hand over it to prevent Pickle from seeing it.

Pickle took it well, and snickered, "I suppose I asked for that."

Chapter Fifty Five

As soon as the girls left him to his own devices, he winced and cried out when his hand was simply hanging off. The blood continued to seep out and was soaked up by the carpet. He picked the hanging limb up with his working hand, and knew that he needed to get his injury wrapped up before he bled to death.

Crying, he walked down the stairs. He noticed that the front door had been left open, and he wondered if those bitches had done this on purpose. He angrily kicked the door shut and went into the kitchen. He knew his hand was fucked, and thought he'd be better off without it with the condition it was in.

He took out a couple of tea-towels from a cupboard, put them on the draining board and reached for the cleaver that sat in a wooden block with the sharp knives. Placing his bloody arm on the sink and his defunct right hand, he raised the cleaver and brought it down hard on the tendons that were stopping the hand from departing from the body indefinitely.

He then took his bloody arm and wrapped the tea-towels around the wound. He cried out every time the bloody stump made contact with any kind of touch, and with three tea-towels wrapped around his wrist, he needed to sit down as his head was spinning. He didn't know whether it was the shock or the loss of blood that was making him dizzy and feeling queasy. He thought that it could be both.

He staggered on the ground floor and went through a cupboard under the TV. He found two bottles of red wine, a half bottle of Southern Comfort and an unopened bottle of Jim Beam. He had seen it in films before, and decided to try it. It would have been a cruel twist if he eventually stopped the blood loss, but then ended up dying of an infection instead.

He took out the Jim Beam, plonked it on the floor and unscrewed it with his only hand. He quickly poured the substance over the blood-soaked, wrapped tea-towels where his hand used to be, and cried out with the stinging. The perspiration poured out from him, and his whole body shot up in temperature.

His three associates had gone and he was left all alone. Two were dead, and the other had fled the street in one of the Ford cars.

He had spent most of his life in and out of prison, and welcomed the new, lawless land that had began to plague Britain nearly three weeks ago, but he never expected this! He had had some scrapes with the dead, and there had been a few near misses, but he never thought he could end up becoming disfigured by a woman, for Christ's sake!

Tears of pain ran down his cheeks, and he then fell onto the couch and lay down. A thud was heard in the house and he immediately sat up. "What the fuck was that?"

He walked out of the living room and saw a door in the hallway. A cellar maybe. With the condition he was in, he avoided investigating if there was anything down there. That would be just suicide.

He walked back to the living room and caught a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror. Even without the severing of his hand his machete-cut across his features made him look hideous, but the overall picture was so horrendous that he felt like screaming.

He glared at the glass; his black hair that was tied in a ponytail hadn't been washed in weeks; his teeth were never his best quality anyway, but the severed hand, his dirty clothes, and the huge cut on his cheek above his thick, dark beard, made him look severely unapproachable.

He looked out of the window, and despite the carnage in the street, it seemed reasonably quiet. He was desperate to get back to the farm before sundown, before someone else decided to claim it for themselves. They'd spent weeks stocking up on gas and food, and he didn't want some idiot walking onto the farm and thinking they had hit the jackpot.

He then began to think about his dead pals, and his other colleague that had decided to leave them in limbo. "If I ever get my hands on him..."

The desperation of going back to the farm and living in a place of luxury for many months forced him to go through the pain barrier; so he walked out into the street, while the bottom of his arm was throbbing like hell.

He looked at two cars that were stationary, but he couldn't drive with one working hand! He needed someone to drive him. He went back into the house, grabbed himself a knife, and went back out on the street. He was going to have to flag a car down, more than likely on the main road that was a few streets away. He was hoping his horrendous appearance wouldn't put any motorists off from giving him a ride, but only time would tell.

"To hell with it!"

He ran through the cursed street, turned right, and went into another. He could see two of the things up ahead, but was confident he could outrun them, which he did with ease.

The main road was just up ahead, fifty yards away, and he needed to pass the top of a street to get there. He looked down the road and saw that this particular street was heaving with the dead. He had no idea why. Maybe they had saw something from afar, or someone had been killed and the screams attracted more of them from other streets. Whatever the reason why there were so many, they were there, and fortunately he managed to jog by the top of the street without being noticed.

He winced as his hand continued to throb; the cut on the face never bothered him too much. He had been stabbed on two occasions during his lifetime, so he was used to the violence, and although the cut hurt like hell at first, the mutilated arm seemed to have taken away the attention from his face.

He had now finally reached the main road. His neck twisted left and right while he walked along it, paranoid of the dead appearing. For two minutes he came across nothing. Then he suddenly heard it. It was the sound of an engine.

The vehicle was in a rush and it quickly came round the bend, giving him just seconds to react. He stumbled into the road and held his damaged arm up. The pick-up truck had no intention of slowing down for the man, and tried to swerve around him. The tyres squealed as the truck swerved to the side, but the left side of the bumper still hit him and he went flying through the air, eventually hitting the tarmac and throwing his knife yards down the road.

The vehicle was now out of sight, and the injured man groaned in pain with his body gaining extra damage, which included broken ribs, bruising, and a broken tibia in his left leg.

He was struggling to crawl, let alone get up, and he knew that his only hope now was if another motorist came by and stopped for him. But what were the chances of that?

The short crawl to the side of the road was exhausting and painful. The pain was a struggle to cope with, but as soon as he saw two dead beasts stumble onto the main road from the last street of the estate, he wished straight away that he was dead.

They spotted him immediately.

He wondered if the screech of the tyres from the pick-up truck had seduced them to this part of the area, but he didn't think about it for too long as he now had more pressing matters to contend with. The two things weren't far away now, and because of the condition that he was in, it now didn't matter if there was just two of them or if it was the rest of the creatures from the whole estate.

He had already come to the conclusion that he was as good as fucked.

They were only a matter of yards away and he thought that although his death was going to be beyond pain, he was going to go out with a fight.

They stood over his battered body, and the things bent down in unison while the potential victim kicked out and swung his arms at them, despite his injuries.

His fight was futile and he was bitten straight away. While releasing screams of anguish, he managed to punch one of them. With the only hand he had left, he tried to rip its bottom jaw off, only for the jaw of his assailant to snap shut and bite into the man's bony hand while the other ghoul was now crouching over him, and was taking a large chunk from the side of his neck. As the man screamed, the thing was furiously trying to rip a piece of flesh free while blood pissed furiously out all over the road.

Even though his first attacker was chewing and had a mouthful of skin, tendons and muscle, it greedily went in for another bite and the other being had now started working on the other side of his neck, ripping it open with its dirty teeth, the blood spilling plentifully.

The victim was now dead and they continued munching at the neck, devouring some of his tongue, until the head came away from the body.

The brains were next.