"See, I'm not as cool as you think I am."
"I'm worried about you."
"Don't be. You've got enough to worry about with Kyle and Lisa." They both began walking again. "Oh, and you're the only person that I've told about this. So don't be telling anyone, even Pickle."
"Gotcha." Paul Dickson sighed and muttered to himself, "Now where have those two got to?"
Chapter Forty Five
Vince and Pickle's legs were weary. The sleep-deprived Vince begged Pickle if they could rest for an hour, and Harry Branston eventually caved in to Vince's whining.
Vince Kindl took his bag off and sat down, with his back against a tree. He lifted his head and glared at the murky clouds up above.
Vince groaned, "It's like a fuckin' greenhouse in this place."
"Got much to drink?" Pickle asked.
"Not really. Trying to take a few sips at a time. I'll be drinking my own piss the way things are going."
"Well, as soon as we find a road, preferably the Hednesford Road, then half the struggle is over."
Pickle also threw his bag off and sat next to Vince. He looked around the greenery and looked up as swallows swam through the air, avoiding the trunks with precision. Branston wiped his brow with his forearm and said, "Yer want to rest, or yer need a sleep?"
"I'll just close my eyes," Vince began, "and see what happens." Kindl's eyelids dropped but could feel a glare coming from his companion. Without opening his eyes, Vince sighed, "What is it?"
"Yer never said much when yer returned from Little Haywood. Yer know, after gunnin' down Kevin Murphy."
"And his old man," Vince sniggered, but Pickle could see that his titter wasn't genuine.
"How did yer feel about it?"
"I didn't have much time to think about it." Vince kept his eyes closed and added, "I didn't really have much time to reflect. By the time I was back we had to deal with the camp being under attack, losing Shaz, then moving camps. Things just went mental for a few days."
Pickle could see that Vince was uncomfortable talking about what happened in Little Haywood, so decided to change the subject. "I bet Karen is worried... again." Pickle began to laugh, and then began to scratch at his itchy, sweaty dark hair. "I bet we're sitting here and Bentley's made it back."
"I hope so. He seems a decent bloke."
"So do I. And he is."
"Do you think they'll come looking for us?"
"I hope not." Pickle's remark had been agreed by Vince as he revealed a single nod of the head. "This place is massive. It'd be pointless looking for us when they don't really know where we are."
Vince began to snigger and said, "Ah, but will Karen see it that way?"
"No chance." Pickle guffawed, "Knowing her she'll be hatching a plan to come out here on her own. But in her condition, now that she knows she's with child, I suppose she wouldn't be that stupid."
Vince opened his eyes and looked over at Pickle with sympathy. How would he react if he told him? Vince then saw the scene flash through his mind: Karen with her back to him, hands covered in blood, running down her thigh and saying to herself, "I'm losing it."
Vince kept his mouth shut, closed his eyes again and leaned his head back against the tree trunk.
Pickle decided to lighten the mood. "What's the first thing yer gonna do when we get back?"
"Dunno." Vince's eyes were still closed, and he knew he wasn't going to sleep properly until he returned to the camp and felt the material of a real bed.
"I think the first thing I'm gonna do is get a cup o' tea, and maybe ask Sheryl if I can use her shower in her solar-powered house."
"I'll probably do the same, then after I should be balls-deep inside of Rosemary. Just as a special treat for her."
"Yer all heart," Pickle smiled and continued, "she's a lucky lady. How long have yer two..?"
"Oh, it's not serious."
"I'm surprised," Pickle spoke with sarcasm.
"We just bang every now and again. It's been going on even before the day of reckoning arrived."
"So are yer two...kind o'...free agents?"
"I think they call it fuck buddies, but yeah, we're both cool with the arrangement."
A silence fell amongst the two men and Pickle thought that maybe giving Vince even ten minutes of sleep would benefit the pair of them. They'd be able to get to the camp quicker, and it might stop him moaning for a while.
Both men's necks twisted to the side once a rustle was heard to the right of them. Vince staggered to his feet and pulled out his machete from his belt. Pickle decided to wait until he could see clearly what was there.
"Might be that strange bloke with the hood," Vince whispered.
Pickle nodded. "Might be a Snatcher. Might be a deer."
Another rustle could be heard in the direction of where their eyes watched. Then they saw it, scurrying up a silver birch. A grey squirrel.
"Come on." Vince put his blade back in his belt, and seemed angered by the intrusion. "Let's keep on walking."
"Yer sure?"
Vince nodded. "I'm never gonna be able to sleep until I get back to that camp."
*
Kyle and Lisa followed David McDonald and Charles Pilkington onto the school grounds. They had climbed a green metal fence, and were now heading to the main reception part of the school.
Charles Pilkington pointed to a small window at the side of the main door. "We can crawl through this once we've put it through. If I can fit through it, then we all can."
"Step aside." David pulled out a claw hammer from his pocket and began to smash at the window.
"Is this going to take long?" Kyle spoke up with a tremor in his tone. "I think my dad might start looking for me if I'm not back soon."
Nobody verbally responded, and once the window gave way, all David and Charles were interested in were removing the remaining shards of glass from the wooden frame.
Once it was all cleared, Charles announced, "I'll go first."
Charles Pilkington had climbed through the frame; David followed with a bit more ease than his friend, and Lisa and a reluctant Kyle were next to climb through it.
Charles led the way and turned to Lisa and Kyle. "Try not to make too much noise, or you'll wake the ghosts."
"Wake the ghosts?" Lisa huffed. "Ghosts don't sleep. And even if they did, I thought the whole point of coming here was to see some."
"The only one we've come here to see is Mr Ives," David McDonald announced.
Kyle gulped.
"Who's Mr Ives?" asked Lisa.
"He died years ago before the dead attacked the kids in the school. He was an English teacher who got bullied by the kids," David began to explain in a whisper that still echoed through the eerie corridor. "It got so bad, he hung himself in the classroom after school had finished on a Friday evening."
"He hung himself in Room 3A. Four years ago." Charles said with a smirk, seeing that Kyle was becoming petrified with the story as well as the scary surroundings. "That's where we're going. The janitor had said on a few occasions that the ghost of his body can be seen, still swinging."
"I don't like this," Kyle began to whimper.
"It's okay." Lisa held his hand and appeared to be the calmest individual of the four. "It's a load of old rubbish."
"We'll see," snapped Charles Pilkington.
"Yes, we will."
They went up a set of stairs in the dusky area, and opened a set of double doors that led out into another dusky corridor.
"Now what?" asked Lisa, her voice echoing down the hall.
David was the first to answer and pointed down the darkened corridor. "Room 3A is just down there, at the bottom."
As they passed every room Lisa and Kyle peered inside through the glass of the doors to see abandoned classrooms. Tables and chairs were neatly put away, and there looked to be no sign of a struggle or carnage in this particular building."
"There's nothing here," Lisa laughed.
"This is where Mr Ives hung himself
," David McDonald explained and pointed at the door of a classroom. "The kids that were attacked at the beginning of the outbreak were in the other building."
They got to the room and all four peered in.
Kyle was reluctant to look, but Lisa grabbed him and pulled him towards her. Now they were both gazing through the glass, into the empty classroom.
"See," Lisa said. "Nothing."
David McDonald and Charles Pilkington were now standing behind the two children and David urged, "Just look a bit longer. He might appear."
Lisa continued to look, but Kyle now had his eyes tightly shut. He just wanted this whole episode over.
David was standing behind Kyle and Charles was standing behind Lisa. Both teenagers looked and smirked at one another. Charles mouthed the words, 'one, two, three'. Then both boys slapped their hands on the shoulders of the youngsters and screamed out, making both Kyle and Lisa jump in fright. Lisa turned around and looked annoyed, whereas Kyle began to cry.
"You think that's funny?" Lisa yelled, pulling her right arm back and in two minds whether to slap one of the boys or not.
Both Charles and David looked at one another and giggled, "Yeah."
"You know what you two are?"
"What are we?" giggled Pilkington.
"You two..."
Lisa never managed to finish her sentence, as the sound of dragging footsteps could be heard from behind them. The noise was coming from around the corner, where the locker area was. All four looked on in fright and all gasped when a rotten hand grasped the wall.
Slowly, a face appeared from behind the wall and its full body was in view as it continued to slowly stagger towards the youngsters. Its rotten face was showing some skeletal features, and the blue uniform it had on and the set of keys tied to its belt-hook on its trousers, suggested that they were looking at the now defunct janitor of Hagley Park High School.
"Run!" Charles screamed, and all four did just that.
Their feet pounded the floor of the corridor, tears in their frightened eyes, and the four of them almost flew down the flight of stairs. Lisa made sure that she was always behind Kyle as Charles and David had progressed further and were already out of the school.
"I don't like this!" Kyle cried, his vision blurred by his tears as his feet continued to pound the hard floor. "I want my daddy!"
"Come on," Lisa urged a sobbing young Kyle to pick up the pace. "We're nearly there."
Chapter Forty Six
Bear had asked Frederick and Willie to join him and have a look at what he was seeing. They walked along the dirt path and climbed the wiry fence behind them to get closer, to get a better look.
All three made the fence and was now on the railway track.
They could now see much clearer and was only twenty yards away from the back of the Lea Hall building. They wordlessly continued to glare and Frederick could see the cattle on the field. Pens were around the edge of the now defunct football field, and it was obvious more livestock dwelled in those pens.
"I'm impressed," Willie nodded. "It's a good set-up, considering this thing is only five and a half weeks old."
Frederick continued to watch without saying a word, and Bear gave him a nudge. "So?"
"What?" Frederick snapped out of his gaze.
"What do you think?"
Frederick shook his head with confusion. "It's great, but why are we looking at it? It's just a tease."
"Are you sick of running?" Bear asked them both.
Both Paul Frederick and Johnny Wilson nodded their heads.
"So what are you saying?" Frederick quizzed. "We approach these people and ask to be allowed in?"
"Not yet," said Bear. "It's too early. I think we should drop the stuff off at the Spode Cottage, come back and watch the place during the day. It's not as if we don't have time on our side."
"But why?" Willie scratched at his chin and said to Bear, "Why don't we just go and see them now?"
"We don't know who these people are. For all we know, they could be savages."
Willie laughed, "And we're not?"
Bear gave him a slap across the side of the head for his cheek, leaving his ears smarting and ringing. He continued and reminded both men, "Don't you remember what happened back at Stafford?"
"Of course." Frederick nodded.
"We were taken in at that house by a group we trusted, then they turned their knives on us."
"But we managed to get out of it."
"Only just," snapped Bear. "My point is...we can't trust anyone. Being paranoid isn't a healthy way to live, but it's the safest."
"I still think we should approach them now." Willie was in disagreement with Bear and thought his over-cautious approach was pointless and a waste of time. They were yards from an area that had been transformed by people and seemed to be doing okay as far as supplies were concerned.
"Well, you're wrong," sniffed Bear. "We'll watch the camp for a couple of days, at least, then we can approach the place if we think it's safe to do so."
"But what do we do if we're allowed in?" Frederick asked, unsure what Bear had in mind.
"We try and put the past behind us, and act like civilised people, like what they'll probably expect of us."
"Civilised? Didn't you kill a family yesterday?"
"Yesterday, last year...doesn't matter. It's still the past."
"Once we think the people are okay and we decide to approach them to see if we could stay, there's a good chance that..." Frederick paused and stopped in the middle of his sentence.
Bear urged, "Go on."
"You're a big bastard, and you're rough round the edges—we all are!"
"So what are you saying?"
"Even not knowing about our criminal background, and the fact that we came out from Stafford prison, we're a scary looking bunch."
Bear sighed and knew what Frederick was getting at, but wanted to hear it from his own lips. "Just spit it out."
"What if they don't like the look of us, that's all I'm saying."
"It'll be okay. When we approach them, be polite and on your best behaviour, the pair of you."
Said Frederick, "And what if they don't like the look of us and turn us away anyway?"
"Oh, I hope for their sake that's not the case. If they refuse us we can always raid that building, that seems to be the storage place," Bear pointed at the back of the Lea Hall building, "and take as much as we can.
"They'll be guards."
"True." Bear nodded. "Which means that they'll also be deaths."
"We can't spend our lives hurting people, Bear."
Bear smiled, turned to Frederick and placed his huge hands on Frederick's shoulders. "We were given a fantastic opportunity to survive in this new world. And it wasn't down to God, and it wasn't fate. It was because of a couple of screws that we still live and breathe today. Officer Thomson and Perry didn't have to unlock the house block, but they did, giving us all another chance. And I'm gonna do all that I can to continue to live, because we only get one chance at doing it. And whoever gets in my way will get trampled on."
Chapter Forty Seven
Bentley Drummle and Daniel Badcock marched towards the school gates with a small crowd behind them. The small crowd consisted of David McDonald, Charles Pilkington, Kyle Dickson, with his concerned father, Lisa, Karen Bradley, Lee James, Sheryl Smith and James McDonald.
Both men, in front of the crowd, were carrying large knives. Bentley's Glen had little bullets left after the woods scenario, and no extra bullets were available for the Glock.
Bentley said, "I thought this place was checked out right at the beginning."
"It was," Daniel spoke up. "Me and another guy, Jon Welsher, checked it out in the first days. It was one of the first places we checked; then after we put up the barriers and removed the dead from inside. We got a key from the Headmasters' office, which Jon lost, and locked the main outside doors and the outside gates. I think the classrooms are unlocked, if I remember rightly."
"You obviously didn't do a good job checking the place," James McDonald snarled from behind.
"Well, we weren't expecting a bunch of kids to break in."
"Look," Lee tried to appease the two men before a fight broke out. "Even if one of these things had managed to break out of the school, it still has to get past the locked steel railings." Lee then turned to Bentley and Daniel and asked, "Are you sure you don't want me and Sheryl to go in with you?"
"For one Waster?" Bentley scoffed. "I think we'll be okay."
"Anyway," added Daniel, "this is my fault, so I'll remove it. Then me and Bentley will take a quick look around before leaving."
They all stopped walking once they got to the green railings and Sheryl Smith folded her arms and sniffed, "This is pointless. If it's trapped in the school and the steel gates are locked, you may as well just leave it in there to rot."
"It's psychological though, Sheryl," Bentley began to explain. "If some of our, let's say, more sensitive residents know that one of these things are in our area, then they may not settle."
Sheryl laughed and shook her head, "Whatever."
"It'd be good if you showed a bit of sensitivity towards certain people, Sheryl." Paul Dickson decided to speak up and was angered by her cold comment.
"Fuck off, new boy. Just remember where you have to come when you and your kid need a shower."
"Emotional blackmail now." Karen shook her head as Sheryl gave her a hard stare. "I heard you can be a bit of a bitch."
Sheryl said with a grin, "And I heard that you're a whiny cunt."
"Okay, ladies." Lee held his hands up. "That's enough. Just remember that there're kids present."
Bentley nodded at Daniel and said, "Let's climb over before a fight breaks out."
They both climbed over to the other side. Daniel then turned and said through the railings, over to Charles Pilkington, "Are you definitely sure that you saw it on the first floor?"
"Yes," said Charles. "By the lockers."
"And it was definitely just one of those things?"
Charles Pilkington nodded.
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