Davina was holding onto her daughter who was told to keep her eyes shut at all costs, no matter what.
"One, two, three!"
David swung the front door open and they ran out onto the drive, only one appeared on the drive but was easily dealt with by David, who kicked it in the stomach, forcing it to fall over temporarily. Satisfied his daughter and wife were safely in the passenger seat, he went to open the driver's door, threw the bags in, but was knocked over by one of the things. The thing that had originally approached their front window had now quickly turned, what little attention span it had, toward the man of the house, and more quickly followed.
He let out a shriek, as he was surprised of the quickness of four beings that forced him to scramble to his feet. He quickly escaped back into the house through the front door, and pressed the button on his fob, locking his wife and daughter in the car. He closed the front door, locked it, and could hear the muffled screams of his wife from behind his front door inside the locked car.
He went into his cabinet in the living room, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before they forced open the door, and he took out a bottle of whisky. He went into the kitchen, screwed off the bottle, and ripped off a piece of tea towel and stuck it into the bottle. He took a lighter from the kitchen drawer that Davina would use for her candles, lit the bottle and bolted upstairs. He opened the bedroom window and was unsure where to throw it.
Would this action be counterproductive? Would they be attracted to the fire or would they move away from it? If he threw it near the car, it may force them to temporarily flee or the opposite could happen. They were already dead, so what's a little fire to them? Or, if he threw it away from the car, it may force them to either go toward the fire, away from the car, or flee from the fire and encourage more to surround the 'food' that was teasing them inside the vehicle.
He looked down to see his wife and daughter screaming, his wife looking up at him, begging him to do something.
He threw the bottle about ten yards away from the side of the car and the creatures dispersed rapidly and went towards the small explosion. For some reason the fire distracted them, but only for a few seconds. He ran back downstairs, only to find three of them by the car.
As he left his house for the second time, he kicked one in the back, it fell over, and knocked over the other one that fell like a domino. The other one was on fire but was around the passenger side. David clicked the button on the fob and the car was unlocked; Davina opened the car for her husband, and he jumped in, fired the engine and reversed quickly out of his drive.
He locked all the doors and put his foot down and saw up ahead Sherree Taylor running out of her house holding her four-month-old son, distress carved into her face.
They knew her reasonably well.
Her husband was a doctor and they had been trying for a baby for years, and then suddenly the little miracle happened. Davina was invited to the baby shower, and remained reasonably close friends with the thirty-five-year-old Sherree.
Sherree banged on the passenger window, but there was too many of them in the street. If he stopped, his family would be finished.
Davina wept and closed her daughter's eyes. David constantly mouthed the words I'm sorry at Sherree as he slowly drove past his helpless neighbour.
The street was heaving with at least a hundred of the things now, and David only looked in his rear view mirror for a matter of seconds.
Within those seconds, he saw Sherree being pulled to the ground by at least seven of them, the baby being used as a tug of war game by two of the walking corpses, as one creature had it by its arms, and the other had the legs, as if they were fighting for the flesh. He couldn't hear it, but he could see by the baby's facial expressions that it was in severe distress and could see it slowly coming apart.
That was when David looked away.
Davina turned around, as David sped away, and tried to see if she could see Sherree through her blurry soaked eyes. Sherree was a Christian woman and held gatherings on a Sunday afternoon for women only. She always politely asked Davina if she wanted to come along, Davina always politely declined her offer, but every week Sherree would still ask.
Sherree had married a Christian man years ago and had just the one child. They had tried for children for years, and ended up going through IVF to conceive which was looked down upon from some members of their church, but they went through with it all the same, and with her husband being a doctor himself, he had no problem with IVF, no matter what some members of his church thought about the situation.
After their second attempt, she fell pregnant, and Karen remembered the excitement in Sherree's voice when she had conceived, telling Davina that it was a miracle and she thanked God.
Davina was a little perplexed about Sherree's statement, as Karen knew that it was medical science that had managed to allow her to have a child, and not God, who she had prayed to for years, begging for a child and received nothing in return. It reminded her of a footballer in France who had collapsed on the pitch and a medical team ran out onto the pitch, revived him and he was taken to hospital and managed a full recovery and was playing football again after three months.
Davina remembered the footballer in an interview, while he was in hospital, thanking God for his survival and had said that the episode had furthered his faith if that was at all possible. Davina remembered David sitting watching the news when it came on, shaking his head and saying angrily: "What a slap in the face that is for the medical team. If someone on the operating table dies, the surgeons get the blame. If the person on the operating table survives, the families thank God. What a peculiar world we live in?"
Davina looked back as the car exited out of the street, and looked at the dead that sauntered around the streets, looking for more warm human flesh to devour, now that Sherree and her baby were no more.
Where was the husband? Work? Hiding? Dead?
Where's God now?
David had hit at least a dozen of the things as the family left the street in his Renault Clio, and turned onto Sandy Lane. David's third breakdown of the morning came as he drove, it was brief, but it was still a breakdown.
Chapter Twenty Six
The Vauxhall Meriva had been doing a hundred on its journey south. Jack Slade couldn't believe how empty the roads were; he had only passed three cars so far and put that down to the fact that people had either already got to their preferred destination, or they had decided that the safer option was to stay at home. He was expecting the motorway to be heaving, but it seemed that fear or maybe not knowing about what was happening was keeping the roads reasonably clear. He had seen a few cars on the forecourts of some garages he had passed, but other than that, nothing on his side of the motorway, but he had seen a few vehicles going the other way.
Why were some people heading north? Was it safer? Had they heard something?
There certainly wasn't any sign of the creatures making an appearance on the motorway itself, but Jack was sure that once the things decided that there was nothing left to eat in the towns and cities, that was when they would spill out into the countryside and motorways. It was animal instinct. If foxes found that there was nothing left to eat in the woods, they would risk themselves by trotting through the suburban streets in hope of a hearty meal. It was all about survival.
He had reached Blackpool and knew that in another two hours he would be in Rugeley. He took a glimpse at the fuel gauge and saw that it was a quarter full. He saw a sign coming up stating that the next service station was ten miles away. His foot slammed the gas pedal down and pushed the car a further twenty. In a matter of minutes, the service station was clear up ahead and Jack slowed down as he came to the entrance.
Apart from two cars dosing idly, there was nothing else on the car park at the service station. Normally, he hated these places; he always found them too expensive.
He got out of the car and held the cleaver. The service station was like any other; it was like a
mini shopping mall. It had a Burger King, a cafeteria, a Starbucks, a newsagents and an amusement arcade.
The garage was separate and situated behind the service station. Jack found the door to be open and walked slowly by all the shops and nervously looked in every one of them. Happy that the place was empty, he decided to use the toilet.
Once he came out of the toilet, he walked into the newsagents and picked up a couple of packets of Marlboro and a handful of lighters.
"Fuck it, I might be dead tomorrow. If the lung cancer doesn't eat me alive, they probably will."
He lit up a cigarette and had to sit down once he took his first drag. He hadn't touched a cigarette in five years, and this one was making him feel giddy, as if he had just stepped off the waltzers, but in a good, relaxed way. He only finished half of the cigarette before stamping it out onto the floor. It was a bad idea.
He walked into the Starbucks area and helped himself to a pre-packed sandwich and a caramel cake. He made himself a cappuccino and sat down with it at the end of the café, with a double dip chocolate muffin.
His cleaver sat on the table next to his free purchases. He knew he was wasting time relaxing, but he had to be focused, and driving that fast with no hazards to look out for, was exhausting for the just turned forty-year-old.
He looked at his watch and informed himself that in two minutes time, he would move his derrière, top his car up and get back on the road. He got out of his chair and helped himself to a bottle of water, and headed back toward the entrance. He stepped outside and looked up to the grey army of puffy clouds, threatening to ruin the beautiful, yet macabre day.
He peeped over toward the large car park and could see the garage. He saw that behind the car park was a farmer's field. If he didn't need to be in Rugeley, he might have tried to stay at the farm. A farm would be the perfect place to be in this situation, Jack Slade thought.
They were in the middle of nowhere; there was cattle and poultry—so plenty of food. They would also be able to see the creatures coming from a mile away with all the flat land they had. Farmers were also well equipped with guns to shoot pesky foxes and they also had heavy duty machinery like tractors and combine harvesters, ideal to use to escape or even use as a weapon if they wanted to save on cartridges and run over gangs of the dead.
Jack deliberated on the idea of taking Kerry and Thomas to a farm once he arrived at Rugeley. Although a more negative thought that crossed Jack's mind, was that if he was the farmer, he would shoot any trespassers, not just creatures, but humans as well. It was all about survival now, things had changed and he was sure that the farmers would do anything to protect their family, and another mouth to feed would be detrimental to their food supply.
He looked to his left, away from the farmers' fields, and saw three of the fiends walking lazily around the empty car park where the HGVs usually parked. He hadn't noticed them before, and realized that they must have appeared when he was inside the service station.
But where did they come from? A house nearby? The farm itself? Or did they used to work in the service station?
Jack didn't know the answer to the question, but he thought that the three would make good target practice if ever he were in possession of a gun.
His short daydream had been disturbed once a pair of glacial hands wrapped around his neck, and he instantly dropped the cleaver to the floor in fright and turned to see one of them face-to-face. He pushed it in the chest, but it stumbled back only a few yards, then it came at him with more ferocity. It was a large female and was wearing a Starbucks uniform. Where did she come from?
Aware that the others were gaining on him, he tried to push the female thing away from him, as they wrestled in the car park. He was surprised how strong it was, and the decaying smell from its mouth was awful, its mouth and tongue was almost black. Jack wasn't sure if it was from feeding or decay.
He pushed the ex-Starbucks worker back again and ran to his car. He took a look behind him and saw that if he stayed around for another three seconds, the other three would have caught up and he would have been killed for sure.
He started up his car and floored the gas pedal, making the car squeal out of the car park. The girl smacked her hands on the back of the car and almost ran after him.
Jack shook his head at his stupidity. He couldn't believe how doltish and unvigilant he had been. His unnecessary daydreaming had cost him the cleaver, and could have easily cost him his life.
He slammed his hands on the steering wheel in frustration, and was flabbergasted at the unpredictability of those things.
In such a short space of time, he had experienced that they would stop at nothing to get to their victim; he also realized that they shouldn't be underestimated. At first glance, they looked slow, but once they had a victim in sight, the speed in which they approached soon changed in some of them. The last experience was a learning curve for the forty-year-old, and the way the last one almost ran after his car was a frightening episode. In his limited experience, he had never seen any of them move that quickly. If he wanted to stay alive for his son and be able to protect him, he needed to be sharp at all times.
I wish I had a gun.
He then thought that having a gun in his possession could end up resulting in an accident, and the gunfire itself, would probably attracted others towards his presence.
He changed his mind about a gun the more he thought about it.
Maybe not.
He joked to himself that maybe a crossbow would be more beneficial, as at least it was quiet. But where was he going to get one of them? In most city or town centres probably, but the last thing he wanted to do was to drive into a populated area, to see if there was a gun shop.
The only populated area he had planned on going was the town where his son lived.
He was now in Stoke, and he was an hour away from his town, he was still trembling from his near-death experience. He suddenly heard a pop coming from outside, his steering became heavy and his car veered to the left down a bank.
Not now.
He had a flat, and could feel himself losing control of the vehicle. He prepared himself for impact.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Pickle had managed to find a beam from the pub's roof that would take his weight. He jumped up and grabbed the beam and began his pull-ups. Now being out of the prison and having no gym to attend, he was going to try and exercise whenever he could. He knew that the lack of exercise would make him feel agitated eventually, and that was something that only affected him, and wasn't something the rest of the group was going to lose sleep over.
After finishing his five sets of fifteen reps, he urged Grass to go outside with him and join KP and Laz, who were sitting outside drinking almost their body weight in lemonade as Pickle had issued an alcohol ban until 7pm until the establishment was locked up. It was going to be their lodgings for the night.
Grass followed behind him and they entered outside into the warm, inviting sunshine, although the temperature had dropped somewhat. The sweat glistened on Pickle's forehead like a small army of pearly drops that refused to run down, and he welcomed the cool air that decreased his body temperature, and also welcomed that all around they could see for miles and there wasn't a single being in sight in the fields.
"Any signs?" Pickle walked over to Laz and KP who were sitting on the bank, staring into the River Trent.
"We just came back," Laz stated. "Checked the main roads, nothing."
"What about the wee garden centre over the road?"
KP sniggered, and looked up at Pickle. "What about it? We're not going inside a building that could be populated with those things, not until you give us the guns."
Pickle nodded and patted KP on the shoulder; he understood his concern, and wouldn't have entered the area himself if he had no sort of weapon on him. As he and KP found out by the garage, they were not easy things to kill, despite their lumbering ways. A head injury was the only way to put them down permanently, and a he
ad injury with bare hands was a hard task to execute, as well as an exhausting one.
"I have a shotgun and four pistols," Pickle declared. "The shotgun's mine. I can't give that away."
"Don't worry about me," Laz expressed. "I don't want any gun, don't trust myself for a start. Besides, best thing about not having a gun is that I can just stay behind you whenever we enter buildings. I'm a coward, guys, always have been."
Pickle admired Laz's honesty. There was no point giving someone a gun if they didn't want one.
"What about you, Grass?" KP had a long blade of grass sitting in the corner of his mouth.
"Err…I dunno." He shifted uncomfortably and looked a bag of nerves.
"That's settled then." Pickle nodded. "KP, myself and the two officers get the pistols."
"Do I get the shotgun as well?" KP asked mischievously.
"No chance," Pickle snapped back, not picking up on KP's ribbing.
"Right then." KP got to his feet and began to brush himself down with the palm of his hands. "So you gonna show me how to use one?"
"Probably best if we wait till the officers wake up," Laz spoke, his wiry frame had sat down and begun sucking on a cigarette.
Laz was referring to Jamie and Janine, who had found a welcoming bed when searching through the property. Jamie trusted Pickle, and it was the ex-inmate who suggested that the two officers, who had been on nightshift, should get a few hours in the afternoon because they looked dead on their feet.
"No need," Pickle said, and he nodded toward the entrance of the pub.
Jamie stumbled out, still wearing his work attire, but now with his creased white shirt hanging out of his black trousers. He covered his eyes with his hand, as the sun greeted him.
"Where's the other one?" KP grilled gently.
"Still sleeping, I guess. How should I know?"
"Oh…I thought you two…"
"No." Jamie smiled. "We're just work colleagues."
Jamie never thought about Janine in that way; he was never short of the female company and was in no way strongly attracted to the young woman. He hadn't been in a relationship in years, but always kept himself 'busy' with a female here and there, thanks to the dating websites he visited.
Snatchers (A Zombie Novel) Page 15