Snatchers: Volume Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 4-6) (39 page)

Chapter Twenty Five

"Can't you sleep either?"

David Watkins was startled by the female voice and looked at twenty-three-year-old Karen Bradley. She was sitting on the step of her caravan, just outside the main door, and eating an apple.

"I didn't know if Mr Kindl imposed a curfew," David spoke with a shudder. "But I couldn't sleep, so I decided to go for a quick stroll."

Karen shifted along the step, providing ample room for another individual. She patted the step at the side of her and asked David if he wanted to sit down.

"Wow!" David's reaction seemed a little over the top for Karen, and he added, "Can I?"

"Er...yeah," said Karen with confusion. "I asked if you wanted to sit down, that's all."

David blushed, which Karen couldn't see, and walked over and sat next to her. He hesitantly looked to his left and both sets of eyes clocked one another. David blushed again and cursed himself mentally that he couldn't think of anything to say to this attractive woman that was eight years older than him.

Karen took a peep at him and asked, "You wanna drink...David, isn't it?"

"No...I mean...
yes
, my name's David. But
no
, I don't want anything to drink, thank you." He shook with nerves, and couldn't even blame his shaking for the July night, as it was quite mild for eleven in the evening.

"How've you managed so far?" Karen avoided the small-talk. She had no patience for it. The question that she asked seemed to be the same question most survivors asked new people. It was like prison, and cons asking new inmates what they were
in
for.

David finally answered, "I kept my head down for most weeks, but we all lost people...parents..." David became upset and couldn't finish his sentence.

"I'm sorry about your friend," said Karen. "That initiation test is bollocks, and Vince should be ashamed of himself. Apparently he's done it to a few people."

David never responded and lowered his head, trying to get rid of his tears and loosen his throat by clearing it. He asked Karen, "And you?"

Karen laughed and took her final bite from the apple. She tossed the cork onto the grass and chewed like a horse with a mouthful of hay. Once she swallowed she said, "If I told you
my
story you would probably think I was making it up."

"Try me."

"Okay."

Karen sat and spoke to fifteen-year-old David Watkins, and told him about her own experiences during the first weeks of the apocalypse. She tried not to let anything slip her mind. She started from when she had finished her nightshift. She told David about how she saw her own neighbour getting her throat ripped out, and then discovering that her fiancé had reanimated in her house. She informed him of driving her jeep to Milford, not having a clue what to do, and then mowing down a few Snatchers including an elderly woman, with her jeep.

David was also told that she was carjacked and had to flee a horde on foot. She then hid in the woods and met up with a sexual deviant, and finally bumped into Pickle and his crew at Stile Cop. Once she told him about the invasion of the dead, losing a few people, and having to shoot her way out to meet KP and Pickle at the crossroads with the prison van, she paused for breath.

"That's pretty heavy-going," said David.

Karen looked at him and announced, "That was just week one. I haven't finished yet."

By the time she was finished, David announced that he was going to try and sleep, although he knew he was going to miss the company of his friend, Harry. He said good night to Karen and left for his caravan, dumbfounded at what she had just told him.

*

The light shone so brightly in each of the men's faces that they were awake in seconds. Vince was the first to open his eyes, and once he tried to move, he realised he couldn't. His arms were being pinned down by the feet of the men standing over him.

With Pickle, the situation was the same.

Both confused men could see nothing but bright light shining in their eyes. Once the torches were moved away from their features, they could now see the guns pointing at their faces. There were four men in the hut, and two of them were pinning down one man each.

At last, one of the men spoke. He was wearing a full beard and appeared to be in charge of the other three. "You leave a door open and both go to sleep?" The man began to shake his head with a mocking grin. "Hardly professional, is it?"

"Leave us alone." Pickle was the first to speak. "We're just survivors, trying to get a sleep for the night."

They all had shotguns, but only two were being pointed—one at each prisoner. The man in command stood over Pickle, his right foot still pinning his left arm to the hard floor, and said, "Just survivors?" The bearded man smiled like a Cheshire cat. "You're too clean-shaven and well-built to be...just survivors. Especially you." The man pointed at Pickle and eyed over his frame. "You're in decent nick. How many calories does that muscular body of yours need? Three thousand?"

"I was a lot bigger five weeks ago," came Pickle's response. "The starvation has—"

"Don't give me that starvation bollocks. You two have done okay so far. And why's that?"

Neither Pickle or Vince answered him, while the other men took their machetes away from them both and began to pad them down.

"Fine. Have it your way." The bearded man was lost in thought, then turned to one of his men. "Where's Gavin?"

"He spent all day in Rugeley. He should be back at the house by now." The man then shrugged his shoulders as if he wasn't sure.

Pickle assumed that the house they were talking about was the one they had just been to.

"I was told that he's coming back in the morning with his sister," another voice popped up.

"Okay." With a hand gesture, the bearded man told his two colleagues to lower their guns. "Looks like we've got
four
people to deal with. Gavin's gonna have to start putting a man at the barrier. His
were okay because we're in the middle of nowhere
theory worked for a few days, but now we've discovered four people in one day. That's not good."

One of the guards laughed, "Are
you
gonna tell him that?"

There was no answer, and Pickle assumed that these guards were fearful of the man called Gavin.

"Right, cunts!" the man kicked Vince in the stomach. "On your feet...slowly."

All four men took a step back, two of them pointed shotguns whilst the other two shone torches in the faces of Pickle and Vince. Pickle put his T-shirt back on and they slowly left the hut and made the short walk to the hangar, under heavy guard. They walked under a massive canopy and entered a green door at the side of the hangar. It looked to Vince, who used to be an experienced forklift driver, that the area where they were was where the HGVs would turn up and they'd be either filled or emptied, but at this part of the hangar the shutters were down.

To their left was a large shed. Groaning and movement could be heard from inside it, but neither men asked about the situation.

Both men were pushed into the main door and entered the hangar. As Vince predicted, it was full of stacked pallets and racking for forklift and reach trucks. They walked around a set of stacked pallets that seemed to have endless amounts of bottled water. The other pallets were wooden so it was hard to see what was inside them, but Vince guessed that it was tins of some sort.

They were told to go into a room that was signed:
Stationery
. They went into the bare room and saw Shaz and young Harry Beresford sitting on the floor.

"Vince!" Harry beamed, and knew there was something wrong as soon as Pickle and Vince lowered their heads and shook them.

"You know each other?" the bearded guard asked. He then began to laugh with another colleague. "Well, well, well. This is interesting." He then gaped over at Shaz, and said, "You said that no one else was with you."

"Well done, dickhead," Vince snapped at Young Harry.

"What?" Harry held out his arms, perplexed why he was being vilified.

"You can get a bottle of water each," the guard said, "and then you're getting locked in for the night until Gavin turns up and decides what to do with you."

"You're not gonna harm us," Harry cried, "are you, sir?"

"I don't know. Maybe Gavin might let you join us."

"I'd like that."

"Harry," Shaz spoke up, Harry's brown-nosing was embarrassing her. "Sit down."

"We'll ask you a few questions," one of the other guards spoke, "then we'll...
Gavin
will decide on what to do with you."

"Thank you, sir," Harry wept. "Thank you so much."

As soon as the bearded guard shut the door and locked it, Vince huffed, "What are you thanking him for?" Vince took a seat on the floor and crossed his legs. "He might put a cartridge in the back of your head in a few hours. This floor could be decorated with our brains pretty soon."

"Vince," said Pickle. "The lad's just scared. Leave him alone."

"I'm just preparing him for the worst case scenario, that's all."

"Well, you're not helping," Shaz chipped in.

Pickle walked over and gave Shaz a hug. "Good to see yer safe. Look...back at the house—"

"It's okay," interrupted Shaz. "There was four of them. All armed. If you and Vince appeared, you would have been shot."

"Oh God," Harry began to cry. "If only I listened to Ollie and stayed in the house, I'd be fine."

"You'd be starving," said Vince.

"Anything's better than this." Young Harry wiped away his tears, but it was a fruitless thing to do as more fell from his eyes.

"Yer just need to calm down." Pickle gave the young boy a sympathetic look. "We could be...
forced
to join them, but at least we'd be alive. I can't see them shooting a kid in cold blood."

"
I
can," Vince said, making the youngster gasp.

"For God's sake, Vince." Pickle glared at Vincent Kindl with demonic eyes. "Shut the fuck up! He's just a kid. Yer said yerself that yer were nervous, even before we came in. Are yer telling me yer no' nervous now?"

"Of course I am," Vince yelled. "But his whining is getting on my tits. We've all got to die someday."

"But I'm only young." Harry was now beginning to get comforted by Shaz.

"It'll be quick," said Vince. "Look at my poor uncle. He was crushed to death by a piano. His funeral was very low-key."

"This is not the time for jokes," snapped Shaz, her wonderful blue eyes glaring at Vince.

"Okay." Vince shrugged his shoulders. "Just trying to lighten the mood."

Chapter Twenty Six

July 9th

Paul had finally woken up, and the first sound that greeted him was Lisa moaning to her mum that she was constipated. Paul pulled the quilt over his head to drown out the noise from the girl who was in the upstairs bathroom, and tried to nod off again.

He reached out to the side of him to feel for Kyle. He was still present, snoring softly. Paul then heard the bedroom door open and could hear heavy feet that had to belong to Daisy. He threw the quilt off of him and asked, "What is it?"

"Sorry to bother you," Daisy spoke with a tremor. "Lisa's using one of the buckets in the bathroom, but there's no toilet roll."

"There should be some kitchen roll in the cupboard under the stairs. After that, we'll be using the tea-towels...socks, whatever."

"Okay, thanks." She left the room and Paul felt a little bad for being so sharp with her.

He looked at his watch. It was nearly ten. He and Kyle had slept for twelve hours—a personal record, collectively. Paul sat up and wiped his sticky eyes. He looked over to see his son lying next to Dino and Monkey.

Dino was a green dinosaur, a cuddly toy that Kyle had since he was a newborn. It was no longer than six inches in length. Monkey was also something Kyle had since he was born. It was brown, and of the same size. Paul and Julie never threw them out or gave them away once Kyle outgrew them; they kept them in his room for nostalgic reasons. In a long while this had been the first time Paul had seen his son sleeping with the soft toys he had since his birth, and this produced a lump in his throat that his son had got up in the middle of the night and grabbed his baby toys from his shelf from his old room. It appeared he needed more than his dad for some kind of comfort.

Poor Kyle
.

Paul decided to leave him in bed, got up, and put his dressing gown over his clothes. He took a sniff of his armpits and he didn't like what he could smell. He knew in a couple of months that it was going to be worse.

He went to the ground floor, and could see that Daisy and her daughter were out of the bathroom; they were in the kitchen, eating a chocolate bar and drinking water for their breakfast. Paul greeted both girls with a quick raise of his eyebrows, grabbed a cup from the kitchen, strolled into the bathroom and dunked the cup in the bath, then took a drink.

The day before, Paul had told Daisy a shortened version of how it went in the sports centre; he also told her that they should use up the bath water before attempting the water he had stolen from the gym. Paul grabbed a protein drink and a cereal bar from his bag and took it upstairs to give to Kyle for his breakfast.

As soon as he entered his bedroom, he could see his boy still lying down, stretching and yawning loudly.

Paul smiled at his perfect little man. "Morning, lazy bones."

Kyle never responded to his dad, and continued to stretch. He suddenly sat up and peered around the room, then looked at his daddy. Paul could see that his son's face changed into a sad one, and Paul had guessed that maybe Kyle had been dreaming about his mummy and Bell and had forgot for a second what was really happening. Paul had done this himself in the second week. He had a dream that he was on a family holiday, only to wake up and find that it was just him and Kyle, and the girls weren't there anymore.

"You hungry?" he asked Kyle.

The little man nodded his head and said, "Have you got any cornflakes?"

"No, son." Paul had already been through this with his son before. "We haven't had cornflakes for weeks. And even if we did, we don't have any milk anymore."

Kyle never verbally responded; he lowered his shoulders, got off the bed and trudged past his dad.

"Are you in a mood now?" Paul did his best to keep calm, but it was sometimes difficult not to get annoyed with his seven-year-old.

"I hate this," Kyle called out with an emotional quaver in his voice. "It's boring." He then shut his bedroom door and began to noisily play with his toys.

Paul shook his head and went after him. He opened his door to see Kyle kicking his action figures across his carpet.

Paul warned, "Rule number two: Don't shout or make any other kinds of noises. And rule number six: Don't moan—"

"Because there's always someone worse off," Kyle finished the sentence off.

"You stay in here for a bit, and calm down."

Kyle gave off a half-chuckle. "Stay here? There's nowhere else to go."

Before Paul could respond to his son's last comment, the pounding of feet could be heard making their way up to the first floor. Paul turned around and was greeted by a flustered Daisy. The stout woman was clearly out of breath, her cheeks were bright red, and there were pearly drops of perspiration sitting on her forehead, ready to run down.

She ran her fingers through her hair and said, "You need to see this. It's all kicking off outside."

Paul called Lisa, and once she came from downstairs, he told Lisa and Kyle to stay in his room for a while. He went into Bell's room to peer out of the window. Both adults glared out and could see a white van on the other end of the road, and four men standing outside of it. Paul recognised them straight away. Next to the four men lay another man a few yards away on the pavement. He was curled up in a ball as if he had been beaten, and knowing the reputation of the four men, Paul was pretty sure that
they
were responsible for the poor man's predicament.

"So what did you see?" he asked Daisy.

"I heard some shouting when I was in the back room. I went over to see what was going on, then saw that man." she pointed at the individual lying on the pavement, "getting the shit kicked out of him by those arseholes."

"Shit."

Daisy turned to Paul and said, "You've lived here all your life. Are they local?"

"They're definitely local," Paul sighed. "It's the Murphy family."

"The Murphy family?"

"These idiots have been terrorising this small town for years. I think every single one of them have spent a stint in jail at one time or another." Paul pointed at the eldest of the group, a heavy man with a look that suggested he used to be a force to be reckoned with in his younger days. "That old guy with the tribal tattoos is the father of that rabble. I forgot his name. He," he pointed at the next one to the dad, "is called Jason Murphy or Jay. He's probably the worst out of the lot. Very violent; he killed a local guy years ago, but he got off because they couldn't prove it. Rumour is that the family got to the jury."

"What did he do...allegedly?" questioned Daisy.

"He knifed a guy to death outside a pub."

Daisy shook her head in disgust.

"And he," Paul referred to the next man standing next to Jay, "is called Kevin, or Knuckles. Horrible man. Rapist. Spent two years inside for raping a six-month pregnant woman by knifepoint. He got out four years ago, but there are rumours he had molested a couple of kids as well, but it never came to a trial. He was also accused of abducting a six or seven-year-old two years ago. The poor kid was found dead, tied up in a middle of a field, but nothing could be proved."

"What a horrible family," said Daisy.

"Tell me about it. I thought you would have heard of them by now. How long have you been in this town, nine years?"

"We always kept ourselves to ourselves." Daisy looked at the final man amongst the group, and before she could ask who it was, Paul explained himself. "The young boy at the end is called Lance. He's the youngest of the four brothers."

"Four?" Daisy looked perplexed. "I can see the dad, and three of his sons."

"The other son, Gary, is in prison for armed robbery and murder."

"Why am I not surprised?"

"He robbed the bank in the town centre; a young girl set off the alarm and he shot her in the face with a shotgun. She was twenty years old."

Daisy lowered her head and shook it.

"They're the most feared family in the town." Paul pointed at the man lying on the floor who had just taken another kick from Jay, the eldest of the brothers. "And with this outbreak and the country becoming a lawless land in places, these idiots are going to go on the rampage while everyone else is gonna suffer. I kinda hoped that they were dead."

"What if they come here?"

Paul sighed and shook his head. He looked back out of Bell's bedroom window and watched the four men go into the house from across the road. "Let's hope they don't."

A minute later, a woman and a child came out of the house, screaming. She went over to the man on the floor—her husband, Paul presumed—while the four men raided her home. Both Paul and Daisy gaped in morbid fascination at the scene in their street, and judging by the twitching of curtains in other households, they weren't alone.

Once the men had finished stealing, they came out of the house, threw stolen gear into the back of their van, and headed for the front. The woman left her husband's side, ran over to the men and began slapping the eldest of the mob in the chest and screamed at him that her husband was unconscious.

Despite having a child present, the woman received a punch in the stomach from the father of the rabble, making the frightened child scream even more once her mum collapsed in a heap.

"Can't we do anything?" Daisy exclaimed.

Paul sighed, "And do
what
exactly? I'm not doing anything that puts Kyle at risk. No chance!"

"So that's it?"

"That's it." Paul then cursed under his breath, wishing he had taken the wheels off of his car, just in case they crossed the street. But then again, he may need a quick getaway if things were to go pear-shaped.

Paul walked away as Daisy continued to peer out. She then quickly removed herself from the window and put her hand over her mouth. Paul could hear the van move away and took a suspicious look at Daisy.

Paul asked, "What's wrong?"

Daisy looked at Paul with her wide, frightened eyes. "Shit. One of them saw me."