Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3)

by Shaun Whittington

  He went over to the latch and opened up the entrance to the attic.

  "Where are you going, daddy?"

  David gazed at his beautiful daughter, her blonde hair was getting longer and it was now nearly halfway down her back. She was wearing her favourite black leggings and her Barbie T-shirt and looked so sweet.

  "I'm just nipping to the toilet, Babs."

  Babs was Isobel's nickname, it was something they had called her a few times when she was a baby, and it somehow stuck.

  "Are you going to make me something to eat? I'm still hungry." She bit her lower lip.

  Most of the time Isobel would finish a sentence, she would gently bite her lower lip afterwards. Each parent didn't know why this was the case, it was just an endearing trait that she had. It made her look cuter, if that was at all possible.

  Davina jumped in, "I'll make you something soon; why don't we have a nice tin of cold beans?"

  "Yuk!"

  David lowered the ladders as quietly as he could, and walked down them, now entering his daughter's bedroom on the first floor. He walked to the upstairs bathroom across the landing and sat on the toilet. Once minutes had passed, he stared into nothingness and daydreamed about his work. Poor Tom Bellion had a driving test tomorrow, and now he wasn't going to be able to make it. In fact, for all David knew, Tom Bellion could be dead right now.

  The driving instructor placed his hand on the flusher and pushed it down. No.

  He slapped his head for his stupidity. In the situation his family was in, this was no time to forget where he was, and although the noise from the flusher wasn't that bad, it was still a noise he wanted to avoid—any noise for that matter.

  He opened his window once the noise of the flush had disappeared, and looked out of his bathroom window, out onto the street.

  "If we don't go now, we never will," he spoke softly to himself.

  His street was awash with the creatures, all mulling around. He could see frightened people across the road from him, looking through their bedroom windows upstairs, and some of the front doors of some of the houses were open, but where were they coming from?

  David, Davina and Isobel hadn't left the house since yesterday morning because Isobel was complaining of a bad chest, which stopped her from going to her cousin's birthday party. Her bad chest probably saved her family, as either one of them could have got bitten or scratched. The truth was, he didn't really know how this disease was caught, he only knew what he had seen, and even that seemed to have taken the experts by surprise, although it had been hinted that it had been around for a week or so.

  All he needed to do was concentrate on the now, and work out a way on how to get out of this bubble of mayhem.

  He ran down the stairs and checked out the state of his windows, and was surprised to see they were still holding up, but he thought this was because they hadn't heard a strident noise from the house yet. If that did happen, he was certain that hordes of the things would pile around his house and force their way through the glass. The barricade would last five minutes if they were lucky, and then the realistic scenario would be to stay in the attic, whilst listening to the ravenous creatures below them, moaning for food.

  And what would that do to the fragile psyche of a four-year-old girl?

  Her nightmares would be the least of her worries.

  David sat on the bottom step and for the second time in one morning, he burst into tears. For the first time, he thought about his other family members, and would have tried to ring them from the landline if he knew their numbers, but they were punched into his mobile phone, which he had left in the glove compartment of his car. He had two older brothers; what were they doing now?

  He had made a decision; he got to his feet, ran upstairs and shouted up to Davina into the attic. "Grab the bag, we're going."

  "Where?"

  "Anywhere, away from here."

  Davina never protested; she knew that if she stayed in the attic, death would be an eventual certainty. It was an eventual certainty anyway, but she wanted some kind of life for her daughter. She wanted her daughter to be out in the open, maybe even meet up with more people on their journey, rather than living in fear, having nightmares and seeing people she cared about being eaten and ripped to shreds.

  A nightmare while awake as well as being asleep, was too much for a little girl to endure. Isobel was a sensitive soul, and had nightmares for two days from watching a Disney's adaptation of Scrooge.

  It was the scene when Goofy was playing the ghost of Christmas Past and appeared on the stairs following Donald Duck who was playing the role of Scrooge. Isobel shook with fright at that particular scene of that cartoon, and complained to her parents at bedtimes that there was a ghost on the stairs.

  If that was how she reacted to a cartoon, how would she react to actually see in real life another human being eaten before her very eyes?

  Davina thought that if they didn't take a chance now, her daughter would be mentally ill within a year, if they lasted that long.

  David, carrying the two rucksacks, ushered Davina and Isobel down the stairs and gazed at his wife; he was holding the car keys and the backpack, and also on the key ring was the front door key.

  He moved the items away from the door, and said, "It's clear on the drive; as soon as I open the door, get in the car quickly. The door's already open."

  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, towards 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 towards 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 vehicle.

  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 motor was unlocked; Davina opened it for her husband, and he jumped in, fired the engine and reversed quickly out of his drive.

  He locked all the doors and pu
t 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 thirty-five-year-old Sherree.

  Sherree banged on the passenger window, but there were 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 almost like 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 they fought 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 and 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, and seen a few vehicles going the other way, but other than that, nothing on his side of the motorway.

  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 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 towards 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 towards the large car park and could see the garage. He saw that behind the car park was a farmers field. 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 mout
h 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 realised 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 stupid 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 realised 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.