"What happened?"
"I'll never forget it." Karen began to titter as she looked back. "He put a Doors album on and by the time the petting was finished, we began having sex when the song Light My Fire came on. It was all over by the time the song finished, and that was the radio edit version."
"That's hilarious."
"Face it, Shaz. Women are just buckets for men to empty their balls in, until you meet Mr Right."
"Gary?"
Karen nodded, and a silence fell on both women. Noticing the colourful bracelet on Shaz's wrist, Karen's mocking of men came to a close and asked in a more serious tone, "How do you cope?"
Shaz revealed a thin smile, and knew exactly what Karen meant. "I don't know really. I suppose you just get on with it, whatever that means. There's nothing else I can do. The way he went was horrific. I've got no doctor to give me a pill for my depression or my anxiety and lack of sleep. I've got no psychiatrist to go to..."
"But after all this shit, we still want to survive."
"Weird, I know." Shaz rubbed her teary eyes and continued to speak. "Spencer was a big part of my life, from the moment he was born to...till he died. He was my best buddy. I loved it when he was a baby. We used to go for afternoon naps together, take walks to the shops and parks. I know it sounds boring, but during the day he was the only company I had, apart from the toddler group, but I loved it, and I loved him so much."
"You really loved being a mum?"
Shaz nodded, looked down at her attire and the machete that was by her side. She laughed, "I know it's hard to think of me pushing a pram or putting a frozen cabbage leaf on each nipple because of the soreness from breastfeeding, but people have had to adapt and change since this virus kicked off."
"I know. I used to be a nurse for fuck's sake, now I'm Xena: Warrior Princess." Karen burst into hysterics.
"I don't even know what that is," chuckled Shaz.
Karen didn't bother explaining that it was some dodgy programme she used to watch on Channel Four or Five, and asked, "So, is it really that great being a mum?"
"I think so."
Karen rubbed her tummy, and was about to tell Sharon Bailey her news, but it seemed wrong to do so without telling Pickle first. Wolf had already guessed a few days ago, but she had known Pickle for nearly a month, and although he would never admit or show it, Pickle would be hurt if she told Shaz before him.
Despite mocking him once in a while and being cheeky, she loved and respected the man. She was certain that if she never had met him, if they hadn't have had their run-in in the woods where they first got together, she wouldn't be alive today.
Chapter Seven
"Well, this is a barrel full of laughs." Vince kicked the ground in frustration and added, "I swear, Jack, the people in the camp are gonna be well pissed off with me."
Jack tried to pacify his partner who was punishing himself over the botched trip to the hospital. "You always knew it was a hell of a risk. The only reason you went in the first place was because you were trying to help them out."
"True."
"So stop beating yourself up about it."
"Stop beating myself up?" laughed Vince, mockingly. "We took two vehicles with four people. We're now gonna return on foot, with no vehicles and two people dead. And it wasn't even the Rotters that took Claire and Paul down, it was other men, another gang. Unless I come up with a believable lie, I'm gonna look weak. I can't tell the people back in the camp the truth."
"It doesn't look good," admitted Jack. "The people who did this are probably based in Rugeley. I've seen up-close what these gangs can do, and I don't even think they're a part of the Sandy Lane camp."
Vince pointed at a thick tree up ahead and said, "Let's sit down a while. My throat's as dry as a nun's crutch and my stomach's emptier than Ron Jeremy's balls."
Jack nodded and said, "I'm pretty parched myself."
"The sooner we get to the camp, the better." Vince took a look at Jack and joked, "I'm not used to this hard living, Jackie Boy. I'm used to having something to eat and drink whenever I please."
"There might be a stream up ahead." Jack used his fingers to wipe away some of the sweat from his forehead. "We could take a little drink from it."
"Fuck that. I'd rather drink piss from a camel. We don't know what's in these streams. There could be decomposing bodies and all sorts."
Changing the subject, Jack asked, "So how far away are we from this cabin you know about?"
"Not that far. Another mile or so."
"What if someone's in it?"
"I know the owner. It won't be a problem." Vince then began to cough, convinced something had flew into his mouth, and spat onto the floor.
"But it might be lived in by other people."
"For fuck's sake, Jack. Give my ears a rest." Vince pointed ahead of them. "Let's sit down."
Both men sat down and placed their backs against the trunk of a tree. Jack could feel the sweat running down the arch of his back and finally reaching his backside, where the sweat began to tickle. Both men wore green combat trousers, Jack had a cheap, brown Primark T-shirt on, which was now sweat-stained, whereas Vince wore a white T-shirt with 'Do I Look Like I Give A Fuck?' emblazoned on the front in black letters.
Once Vince had time to reflect on what had happened in the last couple of hours, he puffed out his cheeks. He could feel his throat tightening, but there was no sign of any tears. "Poor Claire," he muttered.
Jack nodded in agreement. Even though it couldn't have been further from his mind in the first weeks of the outbreak, he thought that there was a genuine chance that he and Claire could have become an item. "I agree."
Said Vince, "I feel for Paul, although he was a bit of a fat fuck, but Claire had been with me since the beginning. She kind of reminded me of my sister."
"Your sister's in Ireland, isn't she?"
Vince nodded. "Yeah. I wonder how they're getting on over there. Since the power went, it's been frustrating not to hear anything. Even when we put batteries in the old radios some folk had, we couldn't really get a station, apart from a French one."
"Do you honestly think the whole world is fucked?"
"No I don't." Vince was convincing with his positive outlook. Jack saw in his eyes that it wasn't just Vince putting on a brave face; he genuinely thought a lot of places in the world weren't as bad as the UK. "Just look at all the open areas in the world, like the outback in Australia or the Nevada desert where people live, places in Africa or the Middle East. Even if these things were in these places, there wouldn't be many of them, and they'd be pretty easy to pick off. Look at places like Siberia or Alaska. These things can't even get up a steep hill, so walking through snow could be a problem."
"Starvation and dehydration would be more of a problem for people living in these areas, than those Snatch...er...Rotters."
"And let's not forget, we live in a country where it's practically gun-free. The only people in Britain with a gun in their house are farmers, drug dealers or lunatics. In other countries it's a source of protection, so even then some countries had a head-start on us. Once they saw what was happening in the UK, people in the USA for example who didn't have a gun, probably went out and got one."
A minute of silence allowed Vince to calm down after his little rant, and he then examined Jack with his eyes and enquired, "How come you've never asked?"
"About what?"
Vince had no idea if Jack was trying to be nice, was being sarcastic, or authentic about what Vince was talking about. "Seriously?"
"Yes. Seriously."
"How come you never asked about the state of my face?"
"You mean that mole on your chin." Jack tried his best to keep a straight face, but his unstoppable smirk was letting him down.
Vince knew Jack was trying to be witty. "Very funny. I meant the scars."
"None of my business. Why would I ask?"
"You were never curious?"
"Not really," lied Jack. "It's not something
that's bothered me."
Vince shifted on the floor, as his backside was becoming a little numb from sitting on the hard ground. "It's the first thing people ask when they meet me. I've had it for most of my life."
"Well, the story behind your scars doesn't interest me."
"You're a funny fucker, Slade," said Vince, who began to pull something out of his left nostril using a combination of his thumb and forefinger, Jack looked away in disgust. "I can't make you out. You're a weird one."
Jack used his fingers to comb his clammy grey hair at the sides, and said with a staid manner, "Look, Vince, I was a normal guy who had a shitty job in an office. I drank, I played the field, and I was a crap father. Since the outbreak I've killed countless beings, I've lost my ex and my son in one day, and whoever I meet ends up dead, whether it's Claire, Johnny, Gary."
"Stop your self-pitying, Jack. We've all killed these things, and we've all lost people we know."
Jack lowered his head and could feel his guts twisting. "You've never lost a child."
"Well, I didn't realise it was a competition." Vince raised his hands up as if someone was pointing a gun at him. "You win."
"Fuck you, Vince. That's not fair. You wanted to know why, in your words, I'm a weird one, now I've given you a quick summary why I'm not always with it. I'm surprised I'm still alive."
Vince never responded to Jack, and decided to avoid an unnecessary argument. They had gone on a trip to Stafford hospital, it became fucked up, they lost two people they knew, and both men were beginning to feel emotional. Vince thought it was best to keep his mouth shut to allow Jack to calm down. So he did.
Chapter Eight
July 1st
It was nearly one in the morning, and Karen huffed, "Noisy fucker," as she exited the cabin. She was still dressed in her black clothes and had put on her trainers before she left. She took a peek to her right to see Pickle and Shaz curled up in their sleeping bags, near the dilapidated shed, and decided to stomp past them and went for the gate. She unbolted the gate, shut it behind her, and went through the greenery and headed for the top of the hill.
She looked around and could see the silhouette of the hill. It was very early in the morning, but because of the summer season and the cloudless sky, her vision wasn't impaired too much, and she made the difficult journey to the peak of the mound. Once she reached the top, she sat down and pulled her knees into her chest, the cold wind slapping her frame and making her shudder.
It was strange to see the Flaxley area and Pear Tree Estate at this time of the day, especially now that there were no streetlights working. She sighed impatiently that she couldn't get to sleep, but it wasn't really Wolf's fault. His snoring was no worse than before, and the only reason she wanted to sleep inside was because Pickle snored like a pig with asthma.
Matters on her mind were keeping her awake and fuelling her insomnia—matters like, the baby, the mysterious sniper, as well as the new world she was now living in. The future looked grim, yet Karen Bradley was making her donation to keep mankind going by producing another. She thought back to when she and Pickle had just met and when she told him back at Stile Cop that she wasn't interested in childbirth.
Pickle: "So tell me, Karen, have you ever wanted a family?"
Karen: "Once upon a time, maybe, not now. Who in their right mind would want to give birth in a ditch and bring up a baby in this shitty world? It'd be madness."
Pickle: "Humanity needs to continue."
Karen: "And why the fuck should I be responsible for that? I'll tell you this, there'll be no cock going anywhere near me anymore. It's too risky, and besides, most men are shit in the sack anyway."
Pickle: "That's a romantic way o' looking at it."
Karen: "I don't give a shit. Any man comes near me, they'll soon know about it."
It seemed strange and ironic that despite her ramblings of the past, she was now in the early stages of pregnancy. Then there was the amount of vomiting that took place when the virus first arrived. When she saw her neighbour, Shirley Henderson, getting her throat ripped out, she went back into her house and threw up on the floor. She was now wondering if that was caused by the pregnancy that she didn't know about, or the horror she had witnessed.
She began to wonder how the other people were getting on—people that she had crossed paths with, like Jade Greatrix, Paul Parker, David Pointer and his little girl, Isobel. She even thought about KP. Did he really kill himself when he left the prison van, leaving Pickle in tears? Or did he end up losing the courage and became one of them? She thought it was strange that when they returned to Stile Cop, after fleeing the sports centre, they never came across the body of KP, lying at the side of the road with his head damaged from the bullet of the Browning he took with him.
Karen lay down and put her hands behind the back of her head. She closed her eyes and listened to the wind skating across the peak of the hill, gliding over her face, and sometimes whispering in both ears. It wasn't an aggressive, bitter wind, but it was cold enough to make her vertebrae rattle once in a while.
It wasn't planned, but she fell asleep. The tranquillity of where she was, a place in the middle of nowhere, where none of those creatures were able to go, had put her at ease, and her body had finally gave in to the exhaustion. She immediately began to dream.
Her dream wasn't a work of fiction like most dreams were, added with a bit of surrealism, it was a dream about what she had already been through since the outbreak was announced.
In her dream she was driving in her Cherokee jeep. God, she loved that vehicle.
But she was carjacked and the vehicle was taken. She was now on foot, and after banging on a few doors, she had attracted a small group of them from another street. She began to run and turned left, and now was heading up the long steep hill that led to Stile Cop, as well as the woods itself. The dead were following her in their droves.
She cried out in frustration, as even though her life depended on this, she knew she wasn't going to make it. She took another glance behind her; the hill didn't seem to be a problem for these creatures; they may as well have been moving on a flat surface. She was exhausted and could see the Stile Cop cemetery up ahead before where the incline started; she veered left to find the gates shut and locked. She placed her foot onto the railing and used every last bit of her strength to pull herself up and swing herself over the six-foot gates. She landed on her back and onto the grass with a painful thud. She looked to her right as she lay on her back, her lungs burning with pain, aching for oxygen.
She could see the hideous beings all crowding around the gate, their arms reaching in, desperate to touch her, to grab her, to bite her. She was confident that the steel gates were strong enough to hold them, and she remained on her back for a further minute trying to get her breath back, before getting to her feet.
Her heart skipped once she saw a dozen hands grabbing the gate and trying to shake it open, but it wasn't budging. She looked at the poor souls and saw that amongst them was a little boy called Harry—he lived in her street. Although recognisable, his face was pale; his mouth was bloody as if he had already fed on some poor individual. It was a strange predicament to be in. Karen was in the local cemetery, and the boy who she had taught to whistle was desperate to rip her to pieces.
She thought about if the worst came to the worst. There were nine of them, and she wouldn't stand a fighting chance, as she would be eaten in minutes; devoured before her very eyes until she passed out before her death.
She ran across to the other side of the cemetery, away from the Snatchers and they let out disgruntled-like groans as she moved further away. She climbed the fence and jumped onto the other side of the cemetery, and she was now in the woods.
She decided to head upwards through the woods; this would eventually lead to the Stile Cop beauty spot that was half a mile away. She could achieve this quicker by running along up the steep hill, but Stile Cop wasn't her intention, staying in the woods and being hidden was. She th
ought that there was a small chance that those things would eventually work out that if they walked around the perimeter of the cemetery fence, they could get into the woods and be on her trail, but it was a risk she was willing to take.
She decided on the woods for two reasons: She didn't really have much of a choice, and there were more obstacles for the things to get around. They didn't seem the brightest beings on the planet, but what they did have was a desire. Their only goal—like hers—was to feed and survive, and they were determined in achieving that goal. They seemed devoid of much emotion, which told Karen that they had no sense of danger and feared nothing, which also made them extremely dangerous, and she guessed that they probably didn't sleep either, if they were classed as dead.
She had already tested out the theory of outrunning them on a flat road, and it was a battle she had nearly lost because of her already heavy and tired legs from working nightshift. The woods would provide a different scenario for them—or so she hoped. They walked and even ran awkwardly, and Karen was hoping that the woods would slow down their progress if they tried to follow her in.
She remembered playing in there as a kid, and if the place was similar to how it was when she was a child, then there was numerous obstacles that should slow them down like chopped down trunks from wood poachers, ditches, and a lot of rocks to climb, as well as the incline itself. Despite their persistence, balance didn't seem to be their strong point, even on a flat surface.
She waved her hands in front of her, brushing away the branches as she strolled through the condensed woods. She took one last look behind her before she progressed deeper, until the trees began to cover the sight of the cemetery. They were still at the gate, although one began to wander away back onto the road and headed back towards Rugeley. She could just about see this through the gaps in the trees, and it made her think that maybe the rest would follow the solitary figure back to the town.
Snatchers: Volume Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 4-6) Page 4