Snatchers (Book 8): The Dead Don't Pray (22 page)

Chapter Forty Five

Vince and Stephanie were taken into John Lincoln's home. He and many others had turned their street into a camp, similar to Sandy Lane but smaller. John had told the selection of people who were intrigued by the guests to leave the exhausted pair alone. Vince had informed John that he was staying at a camp in Rugeley, and he had been out looking for a friend and ended up in the River Trent. John Lincoln gave them a drink, and was then told by Vince what had happened at The Wolseley Arms pub.

"You're lucky to be alive," John Lincoln responded after Vince's story. "We'll get you something to eat, and the pair of you can sleep upstairs."

"Great," Vince rubbed his head and announced, "I could sleep for a week."

"You need more than a nap, judging by the state of the pair of you," said John Lincoln with a chortle. "The pair of you are going to rest until the following morning, and then I'll get some of the guys to drop you off at your camp."

"That's great. Thanks." Vince spoke with sincerity and was thankful that not every group of strangers were necessarily a danger. At least there were some decent human beings left.

John Lincoln turned his head and looked at a yawning Stephanie. The fourteen-year-old was ready for sleep. "And what's your story, young lady?" Lincoln enquired. "How come you were out there?"

Stephanie adjusted the bobble in her blonde hair, tightening it up and keeping the ponytail in tact. "It's too long to tell."

John Lincoln understood and didn't persist any further. She was in no mood to talk, but Vince quenched his curiosity. John Lincoln had taken them in, so Vince thought that he at least deserved an explanation.

Vince began, "This is Stephanie Perkins. She's fourteen. She's from Hednesford, lost her family, then met up with some people and lost them while out there."

"I'm sorry to hear that." John Lincoln seemed more intrigued by her look, rather than her story. He looked at her appearance. The bow and bag were now sitting on the floor, by the side of the chair, but she was still wearing her black waterproof poncho, and the shades were still on her head. "What about..?" John Lincoln never finished his query, but Vince knew what he meant. What was this fourteen-year-old girl doing with a bow?

Vince explained, "Stephanie has been into archery for a few years, thanks to the influence of her dad. I think she wanted to try out the Commonwealth Games, but..."

"They use different bows in the games," Stephanie spoke up. "And the arrows they use are carbon graphite or aluminium. I have pine ones. Look, I don't mean to be rude—"

John Lincoln interrupted Stephanie with a loud chuckle and said, "Upstairs, the room on the left. Sleep for as long as you can. You can eat later." He then looked at Vince and said, "You too."

Stephanie thanked John for his hospitality and made her way upstairs, leaving him alone with Vince.

Said Vince, "I'll go in a minute."

There was a knock on Lincoln's door and John excused himself. He spoke to a woman at the door for a minute and she popped her head round to say hello to Vince.

"Hi, my name's Beverley," she said. Beverley was a woman in her forties, large lady, wore a large smile and looked like she had a heart of gold. "I needed to see you."

Vince looked confused. "Oh?"

She blushed and tried to explain, "You're a bit of a celebrity round these parts, after what you did to the Murphys."

Vince smiled. He wasn't in the mood for praise, but he knew that the woman was just being nice.

"You made it possible for us to set up a camp, getting rid of two of them. And then when a group tracked down Jason Murphy..." Beverley never finished her sentence.

"What happened to him?" asked Vince.

"Some of the locals tied him to a bed and stabbed him to death," John Lincoln began to explain. "He was in a house, belonging to a nice old couple called Richard and Iris. He had killed both of them. Fucking animal. Still, not every story is a bad one. We do have some that can give us hope." John Lincoln looked at Beverley and gave her a wink.

Beverley blushed, knowing that John was going to tell a story to Vince that involved herself.

John Lincoln told Vince, "Beverley isn't from Little Haywood. She's from Milford."

Vince tried to feign interest, and promised himself that once John Lincoln was finished, he was going to excuse himself and get some sleep. Vince asked Beverley, "So how did you get here?"

"She drove to this area over a month ago," John began to explain, although the question had been fired at Beverley, "Our men were out on a run and saw her parked up by the garden centre. She had a baby boy with her, and she begged the men to take her in. How could they just drive away from that?"

"You have a child?" Vince asked Beverley. "Is the father alive?"

Beverley blushed and stammered, "The-the little boy isn't mine."

Vince screwed his face and narrowed his eyes, hoping for an explanation before he fell asleep.

Beverley explained, "I lived next door to a woman called Jenny. She had a baby; her husband works away on a construction site. After that terrible announcement on the news, I hid and hoped nothing would happen. The only action I saw was when a woman turned up at the grassy part of Milford. She went out of her vehicle and I noticed she had a nurse's uniform on. She got back into the vehicle and began knocking some of the dead down in her Cherokee jeep. Mad cow." Beverley began to laugh, and realised she had gone off on a tangent. "Anyway, back to my neighbour. A few days after the announcement, I peeped out of my window one of the mornings and saw a man leave Jenny's house. It wasn't her husband, because I knew what
he
looked like. Faintly, I could hear screaming coming from next door, and this went on for hours."

"Didn't you go and see what it was?" asked Vince.

"At first, no." She lowered her head, full of shame. "I was too scared to go out. I knew the screaming was coming from the baby, and I thought that maybe Jenny had had an accident. Then I thought about the man that'd left her house."

Beverley looked too upset to continue, so John Lincoln decided to finish off the story, noticing that Vince was getting close to sleep. "Beverley went round to the place eventually, forced her way into this Jenny's house, and found her on the sofa, dead. Beverley guessed that she was murdered by the same man. She found the toddler in his cot and took him back to her own house. The poor thing could have starved to death."

"Terrible business." Vince shook his head. "People have been doing some desperate and despicable acts in order to survive, but this was the beginning. Why kill a woman and leave the baby to starve to death?"

John Lincoln threw his arms in the air. "Your guess is as good as mine, Vince."

"Right," Vince decided to get up before another story reared its ugly head, "I'm going to bed before I fall asleep in this chair."

Vincent Kindl thanked John Lincoln, and said farewell to Beverley. John told him what room to take, and Vince waved at him as he trudged up the stairs, aching for the bed. He turned right and pushed the door open to be greeted by a bed that looked already made, and the room smelt fresh.

A smile emerged across Vince's face, and he sat down on the carpet, pulled off his boots and stood back to his feet. He took off his T-shirt that had: "Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost Too" on it—a T-shirt that Stephanie had washed whilst he was in his mild coma, back at the pub, and lay on the top of the cold duvet and moaned with delight.

"I fucking love bed," he groaned.

Vince Kindl could already hear Stephanie's snoring from the other room, and knew that he wasn't far away from a deep sleep himself. He was looking forward to the rest, but the thing that worried him was the potential scary dreams that were waiting for him.

Chapter Forty Six

Three men, all in their twenties, were in the middle of Sandy Lane, none of them residents, and were all waving blades. One of them had managed to grab a passing Jasmine Kelly once they realised that a couple of the people, the guards, on the camp had guns. It looked like the trespassers were carrying steak knives and although hostile, they seemed desperate as well.

Lee, Sheryl, Bentley, Daniel, Rosemary and Jimmy Mac were out on the road, watching the show from a few yards away, along with three armed guards that were supposed to be on barrier watch by the railway bridge. Despite the guards possessing guns, it didn't seem to force the men with the blades to yield. After all, they had a hostage.

It was a desperate act, by desperate men.

Karen Bradley suddenly came out of the house after hearing the melee and asked Lee, the nearest one to her, "What the hell's going on?"

"They climbed the fence by the Churchfields school," Lee clarified, his eyes still focusing on the three intruders.

"More people climbing in?" Karen huffed and added, "You lot are gonna have to sort this." Karen looked over to Jasmine from five yards away, and said, "You okay?" Daft question. She was being held by knifepoint by a desperate man.

Jasmine was crying and shook her head.

"Just don't move." Karen turned to Lee once more. "You lot have been told about the security of this place—"

"I know. Get off my case." Lee took a quick look at the three men and then back to Karen. "We have enough guards doing the perimeter, and we were about to get some barbed wire before this kicked off."

"All we want," the man, who had Jasmine, yelled, "is something to eat and drink! We're starving and haven't drank anything in a day!" The man that spoke out looked like the leader of the three. He had his arm around Jasmine's throat, and the knife's point was at the side of her neck.

"It doesn't work like that," Daniel tried to explain, with the rest in a semi-circle around the three distressed men. "You can't just break in and then think you can take what you want."

Karen looked at all three men. To be fair, they did look desperate. All were sporting beards, had greasy hair and desperately needed a change of clothes. Their clothing was tattered and stained with everything imaginable, and Karen almost felt sorry for them until the leader yelled, "Look, at least give us something to take away with us! Otherwise we'll start hurting the camp!"

"Hurting the camp?" Bentley was baffled by his statement. "What are you on about? You're not far from being blown away, sunshine."

"That kind of talk isn't going to help matters," Lee gently reprimanded Bentley.

"I'm sorry." One of the other men jumped in, standing to the leader's left. "He doesn't know what he's saying. We're just desperate." He pointed at Jasmine and said, "This wasn't supposed to happen. I didn't want this."

"Okay." Lee took a few steps forwards and held out his left hand, trying to calm the situation. "Put your blades down and then we can talk."

"Why do you want us to drop our blades?" Leader blurted out, and pointed at the three guards from the barrier, all carrying sawn-offs. "You lot have guns. You have the advantage. Obviously you're not gonna let us stay, so just give us something to eat and we'll be on our way, and the girl will be unharmed."

"You wouldn't harm a defenceless girl, would you?" Bentley enquired.

Before Leader had chance to answer, the eyes of Lee and co went to the left and saw Pickle, marching up Sandy Lane and heading towards them. "What's going on?" He asked no one in particular, but Sheryl was the first to answer.

"These stupid cunts climbed the fence," she said, to the horror of Lee and the rest. Considering they had Jasmine, they thought that her words should have been less harsh. "They want to be fed, hydrated, and then leave."

"Should just fucking shoot them, if you ask me!" Jimmy Mac snarled from the back, making Lee and Bentley turn and glare at the idiotic man.

"No one's asking yer." Pickle pointed at Jimmy Mac. "Keep that mouth o' yours shut."

Pickle walked past the crowd and went up to the three men. He stopped walking, turned, and pointed at the three guards holding their sawn-offs. "Yer guys are not helping. Back to the barrier before more fuckers get in." They did what they were told, which annoyed Jimmy Mac, and Pickle faced the three nervous intruders. "Right. If yer want a civilised chat and get some positives out o' this, yer gonna have to drop yer blades so we can relax and talk."

Leader wasn't sure and yelled, "If we do, how do we know you lot won't hurt us?"

"Trust me, son. I could come o'er there on ma own and take them knives off all three o' yer with ma bare hands. But let's make this as friendly as we can."

They all looked at one another and nodded in agreement, with the exception of the mouthy one, the so-called leader of the three. He refused to put the blade to the floor, and snarled at his friends who had already done so, "This is not what we agreed."

"You've gone too far!" one of the men, a dark handsome man, yelled. He then turned to the small group and begged, "Please. We wouldn't have broken in if we weren't desperate, and he only took the passing girl once we saw some of the men with guns. We panicked!"

"Just fucking kill them!" Jimmy Mac growled from behind Lee and the rest.

"No!" screamed out Jasmine.

Leader looked twitchy and his two companions took a few steps back. Then Handsome, to Leader's left, dropped to his knees with his hands behind his head, and the other young guy did the same, hoping this would spare them.

"Shut the fuck up!" Daniel yelled at McDonald. "You're not helping."

James McDonald responded back, "We're too fucking soft! Intruders should be dealt with!"

"Can someone take him away," Pickle tried to hide his anger, "before Jasmine or someone else gets hurt?"

"I'm going nowhere," protested Jimmy Mac.

Pickle turned his attention to the knife-wielding leader and held out his hand. "Give me the knife, let the girl go, and we'll sort out some kind o' food package for yer. I promise."

"You'll do no such thing!" Jimmy Mac bellowed. "I thought you were supposed to be some kind of hard case."

Ignoring James McDonald's angry comment, Pickle added, "Please, give me the knife, let the girl go, and then we'll talk." Pickle took one slow step forward, glaring at Leader with his dark menacing eyes. "Yer do realise that if yer harm her in any way, or any people from this camp, I'm gonna cut yer like a fuckin' pig."

Leader had lost his confidence and looked unsure what to do next, but his two pals knew what he should do, and urged him to do what Pickle wanted. Both men were still on their knees and had their hands behind their heads, hoping that this was going to come to a positive solution. Leader moved the knife to Jasmine's throat, but his confidence was clearly lacking. With more persuasive words coming from his two friends, he eventually succumbed to defeat, lowered the knife, and released Jasmine.

Jasmine was in tears and went running to Rosemary, a woman she had known from the Spode Cottage days, and both embraced, relieved that she was safe.

"Now put the knife to the floor," Pickle instructed.

The man dropped the knife and stood up straight, trying to act confident in front of his two other pals. "Right. So let's get this food parcel on the go."

Pickle walked over to the man, kicked the knife away, and threw his right knee into his stomach. The man groaned, doubled over, then received a punch to the kidneys, and then he collapsed to the floor.

"What was that for?" he gasped.

Harry Branston gazed at the young man and said, "For putting a knife to a young girl's throat."

"And what about our food?" he said, with what little breath he had.

"We'll get a box sorted out for yer." Pickle then nodded over to Daniel to arrange a box of supplies for the three men, but Daniel was hesitant. Pickle understood Daniel's hesitancy and said, "I made a promise." He then turned back round to Leader. "This is the deal: Yer come back here again, yer will be executed. Every one o' yer. If yer had approached this a different way and turned up at the barrier and was nice, yer might 'ave had a chance o' staying here. Yer have blown that chance now."

The two men on their knees nodded in agreement, but Leader was still on the floor, curled up, groaning.

Pickle turned around and walked away as Daniel was heading towards the Lea Hall building to make up a box of supplies. Pickle squared up to Jimmy Mac and said, "Yer could 'ave got that girl killed with that mouth o' yours."

Jimmy Mac cackled, "Someone has to have some balls round here." He moved his face closer to Pickle's. James McDonald was nervous, but he didn't want to look weak. Some of the people in the camp had already heard that Sheryl had beaten him up, which wasn't great news for his reputation.

Pickle warned Jimmy Mac, "Next time somethin' happens like this, I suggest yer stay indoors."

"And if I don't?"

"Do yer really wanna know? Yer wanna find out, right now?" Pickle spat, saliva leaving each corner of his mouth, eyes widening.

Jimmy Mac trembled and shook his head. "No."

"Yer mother should have swallowed yer. Then yer would have been a pain in her stomach, rather than a pain in ma arse. Now run along, and don't be taking yer anger out on yer kid. Or I'll get Sheryl to kick yer arse again."

There was tittering from Lee, and this only angered James McDonald even more. He walked away and went back to Burnthill Lane, back to his house.

Pickle then turned his attention to the two men and told them to remain where they were. They nodded, having no intention of moving, and then he held out his hand to help Leader up.

The man in his twenties grabbed Pickle's hand, and slowly got to his feet. He brushed himself down and Pickle began to walk away, but Karen and Sheryl screamed out Harry Branston's nickname as Leader put his hand in the back of his trousers and ran towards Pickle whilst his back was turned.

With no idea what was happening and no time to turn, Pickle purposely dropped to the floor in a heap, and felt the young man fall over his body, and saw a barber's shaving razor—or a cut-throat razor—that had come out of Leader's hand, now going along the tarmac. Karen picked up the blade, and looked at Pickle to see if he was okay.

Looking at the blade, she gasped, "He was going to cut your throat."

"Yeah, but he got ma arm instead." Pickle showed a small nick on his right tricep.

Leader's two companions were now crying, begging for their lives, wondering what the outcome would be from this. The leader of the three sat on his backside and put his knees into his chest. He didn't move. He knew he was beaten.

"What yer doin'?" Pickle stood over him, then clicked his fingers at Karen to give him the blade. She did, and Pickle placed it in his pocket. "Are yer stupid or somethin'? Yer about to get a box o' food and water, and then yer attack me? Why?"

Leader struggled to answer. "You made me look like a fool in front of my guys."

"Yer made yerself look like a fool!" Pickle shook his head at the stupid man. "Why attack me? Male pride?"

Daniel returned with a large box and asked what was going on, but nobody gave him an answer.

Pickle pointed at the handsome one that was on his knees. "Take the box. Go on," Pickle commanded. "Up on your feet!"

Handsome stood holding the box that Daniel had just passed him, and he and his other frightened colleague waited for another instruction. Pickle told the three of them that it was time to leave and that they should follow him to the barrier. The two men began to stroll, but the other was still sitting on the floor. Losing patience, Pickle grabbed him and pulled him onto his feet. Leader spat in Harry Branston's face, but he never flinched. This wasn't the first time he had been spat on.

With the rest impressed by his restraint, Pickle ushered Leader to the barrier and told the guard to reverse it back so all four, including Pickle, could get through. Once they were through, they marched away from the barrier, by the railway bridge, and Pickle turned around to see the guards and the rest all standing by the gap, watching them walk away, wondering where Harry Branston was going.

"We'll be back!" Leader began to laugh and yelled at the people at the barrier, whilst Pickle walked closely behind him. "We'll be back, but next time we'll have an army!"

"Oscar," Handsome spoke up. "Shut up."

Pickle pulled out the open razor from his pocket and grabbed Leader from behind, his palm forcing his chin up, making him yell in panic. "Don't struggle," said Pickle. He heard protests from some of his people from the barrier, including Lee, but chose to ignore them. "It'll make things worse." He then nodded to the two men, including Handsome that was carrying the box, "Yer two are free to go."

"But what about Oscar?" Handsome pointed at Leader.

"I said that if any harm came to anyone on the camp, I'd cut them like a pig." Pickle showed the men the small cut on his tricep. "I need to make sure you two don't come back, and personally, yer probably better off without him anyway."

"No." Leader began to beg. "Please don't—"