Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3) (51 page)

Chapter Thirty Five

It was a struggle throwing Jason Bonser in the back of the van; even with the help of a weakened Harry Branston. The injured man still wriggled and writhed like a snake on fire, but it had finally been achieved to the disgust of their former guest, and Karen was under instruction to get rid of him. Karen had dressed his wound, not as an act of kindness, but so that he didn't bleed all over the floor of the van.

Bonser was threatened by Pickle that if he came back, he would be shot on sight. But it wasn't being kicked out of his temporary lodgings that unnerved and frightened the ex-prisoner, it was the fact that he was going to be dumped in the middle of nowhere, injured, and with no weapon of any sorts for protection. The action of Karen and Pickle, to Bonser, was deplorable, and he felt that being dumped alone would be like ringing the dinner bell for any wandering cannibals.

She had driven a mile out of the village and felt that this was enough, as although a couple of Snatchers had been seen as she drove past, she felt that further up could be a different story, and didn't want to take the risk of having to ram her way through and be surrounded herself just to drop this piece of shit off.

She had thought about putting a bullet in Bonser and then telling Pickle she had dumped him. But she couldn't lie and be disrespectful to a man that she owed her life to, plus, she had never killed a human being before.

She looked up ahead, along the bendy road and in her side mirrors. With the convex glass telling her it was also clear behind, she pulled up the van a little too harshly, and heard a thump in the back as if her sudden stopping had thrown Bonser around. She jumped out of the van and opened the back doors with caution, her Browning pointing menacingly at Bonser who was lying on the narrow floor of the van with the opened cells on either side of him.

"Ready when you are," Bradley growled.

"Please, at least drop me somewhere where there's other people," Bonser begged, but it was one of those begging sentences that attracted no pity.

"I think the last thing
you
need to do is mix with other people. Even if you get to Longdon, they'll probably be no one there, 'cos the place is that small. You've got ten seconds," Karen aimed the gun at his thigh, "or another slug's gonna go into your other leg."

"Alright, alright." Bonser held up his hand in defeat. "For fuck's sake!"

He dragged himself out of the van and pulled himself up onto his feet, as he stood at the end of the vehicle. He started looking at the three steps he needed to hop down to get onto the road. "At least give me a hand." Bonser held out his right hand, and Karen reacted by grabbing his sleeve and pulling him out of the van, causing the man to hit the road with a thump. He screamed out in pain as his thigh scraped the tarmac. Karen calmly began to shut the back door and sighed when she saw a little blood smeared in the aisle where the injured Bonser had dragged himself to the exit. It wasn't much, but it was enough to annoy her.

He looked up at Karen with pleading eyes, who in turn, looked at him coldly with executioner eyes. He knew that he was getting no sympathy from this one, so decided to save his breath as far as the begging and pleading were concerned. She had willingly picked him up and offered him food and shelter, yet, he had returned the gesture by thinking about killing them both so he could have it all for himself. Even Jason Bonser had to admit that most of this was his own fault.
He
had created this mess.

She nodded to his bandaged, wounded thigh. "I did a good job there. I suggest you learn to run with a limp. Remember," she said. "If you somehow come back, you'll be shot on sight. Got it?"

He nodded in agreement, reluctantly.

Karen added, "You're lucky Pickle gave you this chance. He's not like you. In the past he only harmed people for financial gain—business. He wouldn't shoot someone in cold blood, not if it was avoidable."

Bonser snorted, "I'm touched. He's all heart."

Ignoring his
you bitch
taunts, she got into the front of the van, did a three point turn—almost hitting Bonser when she was reversing—and drove away.

Bonser, with heavy, anxious breaths, looked to the side of him where the woodland was, and watched the van slowly disappearing around the bend. At that moment, there was nothing to be concerned about, but he knew that if any of them were to appear, the pain in his leg would have to be put to the back of his mind, if that was at all possible, as survival was the only priority he had now.

He thought about going back, despite the 'shot on sight' promise by Pickle, and maybe try and break into a vacant house in the same street or further down.

Why didn't they just let him do that? Why did they have to be so cruel and place him in the middle of nowhere like a sitting duck? Answer: because Pickle knew he was a piece of trash, and wherever Jason Bonser went, carnage would follow, and getting rid of him was the best option for all decent human beings.

Jason shook his head at the predicament he was in. Why didn't they just put a bullet in my head? Then he thought about the woman he had raped and strangled a couple of days ago, and the infant he had abandoned. If they had suddenly come across this information, he would have had his head blown off for sure.

Why abandon me?
He quickly and mentally answered his own question.
To give you some sort of chance. They're probably not as cold as you.

Bonser began limping along the main road that was unrecognisable to him, hoping that the next village wasn't far away. He thought about his sister. He was still miles away from where she lived, and the prison van would have been perfect to pick her up and bring her back to the house that was in a reasonably safe area for the time being. However, it wasn't to be.

*

Karen had taken her time round the bendy lanes; the van never went higher than second and was doing a casual fifteen as Karen's mind wandered. Her daydreaming of Gary had forced the young woman with the tough exterior, to blur her vision with saltwater that ran into the bottom of her eyes.

It seemed so long ago, and she knew that if he had managed to somehow get out of the house, he would be out there, walking, feeding—but not as the Gary she used to know. He would be out there as one of
them
.

She thought back and knew that if he hadn't have gone for his traditional night out with the boys, he would have been tucked up in bed, completely oblivious to what was happening in the world. She would have come back from work; they both would have watched the TV together, hugged, cried, then barricaded themselves into their house and would still be there now. But because of his night out, he had turned during the night and she was forced to leave the house and was now driving around in a prison van, armed with a handgun, and was friends with a man who was a notorious drug dealer. To say the week had been surreal would have been an understatement.

Trying to shake off her daydreaming—quite literally—by waggling her head, she rubbed her eyes with the short sleeve of her black T-shirt and released a sharp, sudden yelp, as a figure appeared in the middle of the road, frantically waving his arms. She slammed the brake hard with her right foot, and stalled the van after forgetting to dip the clutch with her left, before the vehicle came to a complete stop.

"Jesus Christ!" she exclaimed.

She could see the man was at the end of his tether, and saw him waving out a group of people who were standing at the side of the woodland.

No chance I'm giving you lot a ride, Karen thought.

The last time she felt charitable, it nearly cost her and her good friend's life. But before she managed to start up the engine and drive around the solitary male standing in the road, she saw a distraught woman coming out of the woods with an equally distraught young boy, clinging onto his mother's shirt for comfort. Then two other males appeared.

Oh shit!

Karen had toughened up over the last week or so, but she wasn't heartless. She dropped her head into her hands and released a heavy exhale of breath. She sat up straight and looked back up at the group through the windscreen. She opened the driver's side door, took the van keys, and stepped out into the light wind that cooled the arch of her back that had been gathering perspiration.

"Please," Jack Slade pleaded. "You gotta help us."

She looked over to Kerry, who stood with her son in front of her. She was in tears and continued to mouth the word
please
over and over again.

Karen continued to stare at the group and gently banged her head off the palm of her hand, knowing that her conscience wouldn't allow her to drive past a group of desperate people, especially when there was a child involved.

"Right," Karen spoke, her words smothered with defeat. "I'm staying at a place about a mile from here; you can stay there for the night." She sighed and shook her head; she had been put in an unfortunate position. She snapped, "All the men in the back. The woman and the kid can sit in the front with me."

Paul Parker spoke up. "How come we have to go in the back?"

Flabbergasted at his ungrateful question, Karen pulled out her pistol from the front of her jeans, held it in the air with her right hand and waved it. "Because I've got this, so do as you're told. There's no room in the front for all of you anyway. And besides, I don't even know who the fuck you are. The last man I picked up nearly killed me and my friend."

Paul Parker's face was reminiscent of a schoolchild that had just been reprimanded by the head teacher in front of the whole assembly hall. He gulped. "Sorry. It looks a bit scary being in the back of that, with those things out there." He sighed, "The back it is then." His face was apologetic and Karen immediately forgave him.

She put the pistol back into her jeans and opened the back doors. "Try and ignore the blood on the floor," she spoke.

"Isn't this a prison van?" Jack queried.

"Don't even ask," Karen said, as she wasn't in the mood and didn't have the time to go into detail why she was driving around in a prison van. "Let's go." She then shook her head. "Pickle's gonna kill me. I drop one off, and then pick up another
five
."

Jack scrunched his face.
A prison van? Pickle?
"Were you the group at Stile Cop the other week?"

"Yeah." Karen wondered how he knew and went on the defensive; her eyes shrank and she took a threatening step closer to Jack. "How d'ya know about that?"

"My friend, Gary..." Jack felt his throat getting hard with emotion, briefly he had forgot about Gary and his violent demise. He started his sentence again. "Gary spoke to some guy called Pickle briefly when we stopped at Stile Cop Road. Is that where you're taking us?"

"No. Stile Cop is a no-go area now."

"What happened?"

Karen lowered her head, and a five second film of the Stile Cop scene had played in her head. She could see Jamie and Janine being devoured, Pickle and KP running along the side of the hill to get to the van, while she stayed put for as long as she could, putting a bullet into the diseased brain of whomever came closest. She could see herself being grabbed while she tried to get into the van and Pickle unloading a shotgun cartridge at her attacker…and KP being bitten and leaving the van to end his life with dignity rather than turning into one of them.

Karen finally answered Jack. "Some of our friends got attacked, and we fled the place—look, I don't mean to sound rude, but...get the fuck in the van."

Jack smiled at Karen and went inside. She seemed okay, he thought. She was aggressive, but that was fine. Everyone seemed to be irritable in some way or another. It was perfectly understandable.

"If you wanna seat, just sit in the cells," she advised the men.

Paul Parker was the next to go in, Karen looked behind her and saw Kerry lifting Thomas into the front, and before she got in herself, Karen shouted over, "Make sure the kid doesn't touch anything!"

Kerry responded with a grateful smile. A sweaty Lee Hayward walked by Karen and was about to step into the back of the van without uttering a single word of thanks, but looked at her and gave her a grateful smile.

Karen grabbed the overweight man by his shoulder and ordered him to stand outside the van, which perplexed him, as well as Jack and Paul who were now in the back.

Karen popped her head into the back of the van and announced to the two confused men, "I'll be two minutes." She then shut the back doors and locked them in. She then turned to face the fifty-six-year-old confused male.

"What's going on?" Lee nervously asked with a fake smile that quavered with fear and confusion.

"Look at my face," Karen ordered, ignoring the protests being made by Paul and Jack from inside the back of the van.

"What?"

"Look at my face." she repeated.

Lee shuddered with apprehension and was almost crying. "I don't understand what you mean." His voice was pleading and almost begging.

Unsatisfied with his response, Karen pulled out the handgun from the front of her jeans. "Get on your knees," Karen ordered quietly. She looked behind, making sure that Kerry and her son were in the front and out of earshot.