This loathsome scene the men were witnessing increased their nervous energy, and their jog turned into a sprint as they began to run up Stile Cop Road. As soon as Gary approached the Stile Cop cemetery, he had to stop as he felt his left hamstring twinge with pain. They had only run three hundred yards, but he felt his leg smarting. He looked up to the sky and welcomed the rain that began to lash down on his overheated skin.
"Oh, shit on a stick." Jack had managed to say those words through whatever breath he had left. He nodded toward the edge of the woods that began at the end of the cemetery.
One by one, three hideous beings stumbled clumsily from out of the woods onto the road. All creatures were male and both men pulled out their six-inch blade knives automatically on seeing the heinous beasts.
Gary shook with fright, and knew that outrunning these creatures with a tweaked hamstring was going to be difficult. Jack looked over to him, with false bravado etched on his face. "Don't worry, I've done this before, it's a piece of cake. Well, actually it's not…"
"What do I do?" Gary panicked.
"Aim for the head. Just don't get any blood in your eyes."
Both men began attacking all three of the creatures and Gary was apprehensive that he was outnumbered, and two of them lumbered toward his direction. He released cries of panic as he stabbed the first one that approached him and he couldn't understand how his knife was penetrating the face, but nothing was happening.
He briefly looked over to Jack whose blade was rammed deep into the top of the head of his attacker. Gary slashed at the attackers' arms that were desperately trying to grab him. His slashing technique had removed some of the fingers of the unbothered creatures, but then Gary grabbed the knife with both hands, closed his eyes and used a sledgehammer technique to bring the knife down into the skull of his first attacker.
A splat of dark blood spat out from the wound as soon it was penetrated, but he had no time to gather his breath or pull out the knife as the embedded weapon fell with the creature. Then a cold pair of hands grabbed his face.
Despite being an ex-inmate, Gary wasn't used to this kind of confrontation and violence, and could feel his bowels loosening as they both fell and now the second creature was on top of him. The stench from its body was forcing him to retch, and while doing this, he was trying to fight off the surprisingly strong cold creature that groaned in his face at the same time.
He didn't know what to do, and remembered a technique he had seen in a horror movie once and stuck one of his thumbs into the cold left eye socket of the creature. He retched once more and screwed his face with repulsion, as he began to implement this desperate technique he stole from Bruce Campbell. He tried to force the thumb in as far as he could. He could feel the acid in the back of his throat whilst he was performing this macabre action, and dark gunk poured over his hand and out onto his T-shirt as his thumb went further in and began to damage the brain.
He pulled out his thumb and forced it back in once more, and it seemed to be taking effect as the thing writhed around out of control, his other thumb went into the other eye socket, and now both eyes pissed out the oily smelly liquid. The inside of the sockets were freezing, as if he had shoved his thumb in a pile of mince that had just defrosted. He moved the thumbs around from side to side furiously and was aware that what he was doing was so vigorous, that he was in danger of breaking his thumbs.
The creature eventually stopped writhing, and Gary pulled out his thumb that was covered in black gunk and wiped it on his trousers. Jack had come over and grabbed the thing off of Gary, and dragged it off his new friend and placed it to the side of the road. He grabbed the other two bodies as Gary tried to get his breath back, and again, dragged them to the side of the road. He could see another body further up the road, that was also at the side, and knew this was the kindest thing to do rather than just leaving them, as humans would eventually need the road to use in a matter of days or weeks once they began leaving their homes.
Gary shook his head at Jack, checked himself for scratches and then snarled with little breath. "A piece of cake? I had two of the fuckers!"
Jack giggled nervously. "Well, you did try and kill one of them with your thumbs." Jack helped his colleague up and looked at his T-shirt. It looked like he had had an accident with an oil canister, and Jack then turned to the bodies that were so violently dealt with. "Good work, my friend."
"We're not finished yet."
Jack Slade frowned and moved his head to one side. "What are you talking about?"
Gary pointed.
Jack put his hands on his hips and sighed. "That's not good."
The two men tried to capture their breath, and saw the horrific scene of the horde heading their way from Draycott Park and onto the main road that they were on.
Most of the creatures were burning, some smouldering, other had managed to walk through the fireball hardly untouched and turned left onto Stile Cop Road. Both men knew that the fire wasn't going to last forever, and even if the burning ones and their brains were eventually devoured by the fire, there would be more from behind that would be less damaged as the fire died down.
Gary instructed, "We'll go the farmers field way, it will be safer, less chance of being ambushed, and be more awkward for those dozy bastards to walk across."
Gary and Jack went under the barbed wire fence and began to jog along the field; Jack looked to the small army gathering at the bottom of the road, and could see some of the things were following them onto the field after falling through the fence, but the barbed wire fence was troublesome for most of the creatures. He thought that most of the things would probably suffer trying to follow them on such uneven ground, let alone trying to get past the barbed wire.
As soon as they managed five hundred yards across the field, Gary was still ahead of Jack, despite his injury, and Jack turned around. The field was filling up, but he could also see in the distance that many were heading up Stile Cop Road, rather than following them.
Shit. Jack thought about the camp that was set up on the beauty spot. I hope they'll be okay.
If only ten or twenty made their way up Stile Cop Road, Jack still thought that the camp might be in trouble. He looked at the dying fireball from a distance, and couldn't help thinking that the explosion could attract many of them from afar, like flies round shit, they could turn up in their thousands.
Although it was an act of desperation, Jack felt that Gary's act, could be detrimental for the people up at Stile Cop, but from a positive slant it would also clear some of the town, which would benefit the residents and give them space to leave their infested town, especially for the people who had barricaded themselves in their houses in Draycott Park.
He sped up to get to Gary, burdened with guilt.
Chapter Forty Nine
Isobel hadn't stopped screaming since the attack of her mother, and David was ordered by Pickle to get back into the Renault Clio, as although he was sympathetic to his loss, the screaming of the young girl was making the camp vulnerable for potential further attacks if they could be heard from afar.
It did worry the camp that if there was one of them, they could be more. The group were hoping that it was an isolated incident and the being that turned up was a stray, but they couldn't be sure.
Janine went over to the car and her eyes filled as she saw the two distressed souls hugging one another as if their lives depended on it. David was naturally hysterical, but his attempt of calmness for the sake of his little girl was not happening, as he wasn't just mourning for his wife, but he suffered for his daughter as well who was hysterical from seeing the being appearing and then being executed.
She didn’t even know that she had just lost her mother.
David clung on to his baby girl and was convinced that this was just the beginning, and his daughter would receive many mental scars once the month of June had come to a close, if they made it that far.
This was no life for a little girl—for anyone, for that matter.
Isobel kept on asking for her mummy, and David told her again and again that she was coming soon.
Janine opened the door and wept. "David, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
"Shut the door," he screamed, and leaned forward and said in a threatening whisper. "I haven't told her yet."
She did as she was told; she carefully shut the door and wandered toward Jamie's direction who stood helplessly in the middle of the beauty spot like everyone else. KP's head was lowered with mortification. He knew he was partly to blame for the tragedy that had occurred and wanted to just walk away from the group. It was something he was deliberating. KP was sure that if David was carrying one of Pickle's Brownings, he would have been dead right now.
Jamie and Janine were comforting one another and both glared at KP; he wanted to respond to their unwanted uncomfortable staring, but considering the circumstances, he felt that he had to take whatever was dished out to him from the group. Pickle walked over to KP, almost feeling sorry for the man, and patted him on the shoulder.
"I'm sorry," KP spoke at last, biting his bottom lip, feeling the hairs of his beard tickling his top lip. "It was a stupid thing to do."
"It's not as if you did this on purpose," Pickle whispered, out of earshot from the rest of the group. "Besides, these people might have been dead already if they hadn't found us. You sure there was only one of those things?"
KP nodded.
"I had to kill Laz, and you've had to kill the woman. We have to do what we have to do to protect the camp. It's hard, but a necessity."
"What's left of it, we're diminishing by the hour."
Pickle looked around and noticed the camp was engulfed in shock, and their eyes were focused elsewhere. He gave KP a quick hug, and patted him on the back. "We'll get through this."
KP wasn't sure about this, but decided not to question Pickle's confidence. He walked over to the Clio and ignored Pickle's protests. He exhaled out hard and opened the car door, making Isobel scream even more as the opening of the door gave her a fright. She was now face-to-face with the man who executed the thing so violently in front of her eyes.
"What the hell do you want?" David demanded. "Leave us alone."
"I'm sorry," KP announced. "For what it's worth, she wanted me to do it."
"Close the fucking door!" David placed his hands over Isobel's ears. "She doesn't know."
KP normally didn't allow to be spoken to like that, hence one of the reasons why he was serving a sentence, but his sympathy for the family was so overpowering, that even the hard faced criminal was becoming frustrated with himself as he felt the water beginning to fill the bottom of the his sockets. He shut the door and walked away.
Janine walked over to KP, her face teary and filled with angst. "What were you thinking?"
"I had no choice. She was gonna turn, eventually."
"I don't mean killing her, I mean, not paying attention. You're the one with the gun, and now a family has been torn apart."
KP responded coldly, "There're many families out there that have been torn apart, quite literally."
Janine slapped him hard across the face. He took it, but the anger in his face was for all to see. Jamie was about to walk over to drag Janine away, but Karen beat him to it.
Janine walked away from KP and had left Karen alone with him; they both stood out of earshot from the group.
"For what it's worth," Karen spoke with a hushed tone. "I know you're hurting, but what you did afterwards was correct. You can't go back now; what's happened has happened. Deal with it."
His eyebrows were raised after Karen's short talk, and looked at the twenty-three-year-old as she walked away, still wearing her light blue NHS nurse uniformed trousers, and went over to the Clio to comfort the family.
*
Fifteen minutes had passed, and Pickle and Jamie had come out of the wooded area after digging Davina's grave. Pickle went to the back of the van and washed his grubby hands, then whistled over to KP and gestured with his hand to follow him into the woods. Jamie sat down next to Janine, feeling exhausted. Pickle was holding a sheet he had got from the back of the van and KP followed him in, and minutes later they were both standing over Davina's body.
They carefully turned her over onto her back and placed a sheet on the floor next to the body. They then picked up Davina's body, KP had the legs, and Pickle took the arms, and placed her on the sheet. They wrapped her in the sheet that they took from the van and placed her in the shallow grave that Pickle and Jamie had dug earlier. They used their boots to put the piled soil over the body and after another five minutes of patting the earth to make it look smooth, Pickle began making a crucifix made of two branches that were tied together with some string that KP had found in the glove compartment of the van.
Satisfied that that was the best they could do, Pickle turned to KP and told him to go and get David. It seemed incredibly harsh to bury a man's wife who had only been dead for a matter of minutes, but Pickle didn't have anywhere to preserve the body and didn't want to leave it in the woods for hours for all kinds of creatures to have a nibble at. It was more respectful this way, and David had reluctantly agreed on this.
Laz's body had been buried near the edge of the beauty spot but David insisted that he wanted her buried where she died and away from his daughter's eyes, which was a little dangerous, considering it was one of those things that emerged from the woods that killed her.
Once the burial had taken place, the ceremony itself was going to be attended by Pickle and David only, although Pickle tried to persuade David for Isobel to be told and to also attend the ceremony to say goodbye to her mother. His advice fell on deaf ears.
"I think it's better if yer stay away," Pickle said to KP; his voice was calm and never wanted his friend to be offended by what he had just told him.
"You think?" KP said with sarcasm. "Considering it was my fault that she got bit, and it was me that put a bullet in her head? You may be correct."
Pickle never responded to his sarcasm and felt sorry for KP; he was going to wait until the night drew in before he would have a talk with him and give him some kind words of comfort.
Pickle stuck the handmade crucifix at the beginning of the grave and gave it a twist to ensure it went in further. There was nothing around that could decorate it; there was no rocks, pebbles...nothing. It was as basic as it could get, and he hoped that David understood that despite the basic looking burial, he had put a lot more effort into this than he did with Laz's burial.
Laz didn't even have a service; it was more like a 'so long buddy' and then he and KP walked away from the grave and that was it finished with.
David appeared through the trees, his eyes still raw from the emotion that forced his eyes to leak profusely.
Pickle asked, "No Isobel with yer?"
David shook his head sadly. "She's with the girls. She doesn't know what's going on. She thinks her mummy's hurt and gone to hospital."
"She thinks? Or is that what yer told her?"
David ignored Pickle's question, and felt that considering it was one of his men that was responsible for his wife's death, he had no say in what he told his daughter.
David needed to protect Isobel as much as he could, and if that meant lying to her about her mother's death, then so be it. She was distraught enough as it was, and she screamed for her daddy when he walked away from her, leaving Janine to comfort her. Janine had to hold the little girl back when David walked away into the woods to meet Pickle for the private burial.
David could only imagine how much more trauma and confusion it would cause if he sat his daughter down and told her that she would never see her mummy again. So he opted not to tell her the truth for now.
Pickle whispered, "Sorry, it had to be done so quickly."
David nodded and accepted Pickle's apology.
"If any animals from the woods comes near and they…eat…her…oh fuck."
"It's okay." David placed his hands on Pickle's shoulder. "I k
now what you mean. She needs to be rid of as soon as possible."
"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that." Pickle was astonished at David's comment, but was certain it was just the shock talking.
"It's okay, let's get this over with."
Pickle's chest caved inwards and he pushed out a sigh. "I spent years reading the Bible in the prison, so I can say a few words if yer want me to."
David confessed tearfully, "Davina and I never believed in that kinda stuff...but that would be good."
Pickle cleared his throat and paused for a second, he didn't know where to start. For a moment he nearly blurted out the words, Dearly beloved, which would have been totally inconsiderate, although there was a miniscule chance it could have lightened the mood.
Pickle bowed his head in an attempt to start again and then raised his head and began to speak. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God."
Pickle paused and looked at the distraught David, his heart went out to him, and instead of getting stronger, Pickle was feeling that this new world was weakening him. For Christ's sake, I used to torture people for fun, and now my heart is breaking for a man I hardly know.
He thought of a short poem he had written for his father's funeral and incorporated it into the private service he was presenting.
"God took you in his loving arms. He saw you needed rest. His garden must be beautiful. For he only takes the best."
Pickle's eyes watched the broken man as the tears ran off his face like a dripping tap, and remembered a passage from his prison days.
He continued, "There is but one freedom, to put oneself right with death. After that, everything is possible. I cannot force you to believe in God. Believing in God amounts to coming to terms with death. When you have accepted death; the problem of God will be solved, and not the reverse. God bless you Davina, you don't have to worry, as your daughter will be in safe hands. David will look after her, we will look after her."
Snatchers (A Zombie Novel) Page 29