Laz looked on in horror from the offices, as at least twelve of the things brought down the youngster and began to attack him. He could see at the other side, the group coming together to witness the destruction of young Conor Snodgrass. Three of the things ignored the bloody feast that was happening, and advanced towards the group at the clothes section instead.
Laz was safe for now. But what was going to be the end product? Him, stuck in the offices with these things trying to get in, as the group safely retreated back to Stile Cop with a van full of food and water? No chance!
Laz opened the office door and was now standing back on the balcony. He saw the remains of Grass being devoured by seven of the things that looked like they used to work at the place, as they were all dressed in similar attire.
He felt queasy as he saw one of them pushing its hand into the ripped-off head of the young man and scooping out the brains and shoving the findings into its mouth rapidly, as if someone was about to steal it from them. Another two were biting into his legs and the torso couldn't be seen at all, apart from what used to be inside it, which had spilled out all over the balcony.
Laz assumed that the frightened staff must have locked themselves in as the outbreak was announced, and maybe one of them had already been bit or scratched by an infected customer or member of staff. He could only imagine what carnage had taken place in the staff room as they changed into these mindless freaks. It appeared that they had no idea on how to get out of the staff room once they had turned. That was until Grass came along and kicked the hornet's nest.
"What shall we do?" Jamie asked; his face was etched with panic, as slowly, three of the creatures dragged their feet towards the group.
"Shoot the fuckers!" KP exclaimed. "In the head!"
The group adhered to KP's advice and did exactly that.
It was self-evident that target practice hadn't been introduced, as some bullets from the four pistols that were being unleashed, hit the torso of some of those things. It took a few seconds before the first one fell to its knees and fiercely hit the floor face down.
Seeing that there were some bullet holes in the wall that had completely missed them, Pickle spoke out. "Wait till they get nearer!"
There were now seven of them about thirty yards away, the nearest two were ten yards in front, and the remaining five that were devouring the rest of Grass, seemed unruffled about the noise that was being generated by the weapons.
The first one in front of the group of the beings was an obese-looking young girl; she was virtually unrecognisable now as her face was ashen, her mouth and clothes stained with other peoples' blood, and she walked as if she had spent twelve hours in a pub with Oliver Reed.
KP stepped forwards, pointed his Browning at the girl and took her out with one clean shot, which took him by surprise. The rest followed suit and one by one, they fell. Some of the shots were still not hitting the target, but they eventually fell like dominoes, as if someone had just kicked over a line of mannequins.
Seven of the bodies were slumped on the floor; black fluid left the entrance of the wounds from some of the bodies, like a slow oil spill. Pickle and the rest of the group walked forwards onto the balcony; the four creatures that had devoured Grass, got to their feet. They looked up and began walking towards the group, except one. Its attention was distracted by the presence of Laz standing outside the office. Laz went back into the offices and hid himself in the ladies toilets that were situated near the photocopier. Pickle aimed from afar, and took himself by surprise when he released a shot and saw the loner ghoul take a fall before it got to the offices.
As the three others staggered towards the gun-wielding group, two went down immediately from Jamie and KP's guns. Jamie and KP continued to pull at the triggers and found that their magazines were empty.
Pickle smiled and said, "Allow me." The third, now twenty yards away, speeded up at the same speed as a jogger.
"Let me," Janine jumped in nervously. "I don't think I've got one yet."
Pickle stepped to the side and Janine shook so much, she needed two hands to hold the gun. She finally fired two rounds; one skimmed the outside of the neck. As it got closer, she made no mistake with the second shot that hit the thing in the left eye socket. It fell with a heavy thump.
"Well done." Pickle patted Janine on the shoulder. It was never meant to be a patronising comment from Pickle, and Janine never took it that way. She was almost in tears and her hands shook violently from her first experience of firing a handgun.
Pickle said, "Back in a minute."
Pickle saw something from afar that unnerved him. He marched his muscular frame over the balcony. He tried not to look at what was left of Grass, and stepped over the bloody remains that were scattered across the area.
Pickle could see Laz, now wrestling with one of them as they both fell out of the ladies toilets in the offices. The thing was on top of him, and Laz was trying his utmost to fight off the creature, but Pickle felt Laz was too weak to last too long. Laz was weedy; he was unfit and was on the wrong side of forty.
The creature turned around to see Pickle entering the offices holding the shotgun the wrong way round. The butt of the shotgun hit it twice; its head cracked open and left a dark stain against the wall as it fell to the floor. Another violent crashing blow would have surely emptied the contents of the head, but Pickle temporarily refrained himself from doing so, unlike what he did with the female worker back at the Wolseley Arms pub.
He stood back as Laz tried to recover his breathing, and this time instead of bringing the gun down, he delivered a blow by swinging the butt of the shotgun like a baseball bat, into the side of the head of what used to look like, a teenage checkout girl. What she was doing in the toilet, he didn't know. It lay motionless on the floor, and Pickle was satisfied that the incident wasn't quite as messy as it was back at the pub; he was now feeling nauseous after witnessing what had happened to young Grass.
Almost in tears, the exhausted Laz staggered to his feet, and tried to speak but was finding it an arduous task.
Pickle wiped the butt off the gun on the office carpet and strapped the gun back around over his shoulder, the belt hanging loosely. "Where the fuck did she come from?" Pickle quizzed.
Said Laz, "I dunno. She was in there when I went in. I opened the door to get out as soon as I saw her, but she grabbed me…"
"This is fucking mental!"
"Her fuckin' breath stunk." Laz tried to make a joke about a situation that had made him piss his shorts.
"Not too sure they can actually breathe, aren't they technically dead? Must be the decay in the mouth area you're referring to."
Laz looked out of the office windows and his saddened eyes glared at the middle of the balcony. "Fuckin' shame about Grass."
Pickle sighed and smacked his lips together. "I'm gonna have to take responsibility for that one."
"It's not your fault, Pickle!"
"I should have checked the area properly. It was me that said all clear and I shouldn't have allowed two unarmed men go into that situation."
"If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I just fucked off and he followed me."
"Whatever; we'll talk about it later. We need to get out o' here."
The two men heard the groaning of the girl that was lying on her back.
Fucker's still alive!
An exhausted Pickle asked Laz politely to step aside, and pulled out his pistol from his belt and responded to the noise with two short sharps bursts of gunfire to the cranium from his Browning pistol. The back of the head began to re-decorate the beige carpet with the black liquid that ran out of its damaged skull.
"Let's hope that this isn't a regular thing." Laz looked at his hands that were shaking violently and winced as he touched his right arm. He began to light up a cigarette.
"Tell me about it," Pickle spoke, taking the cigarette directly from Laz’s mouth and took in a long deep suck, then handed it back to him. "Between the four o' us, we wasted abou
t forty bullets on twelve of those things. Jamie and KP had emptied their magazines and there was some still left standing."
"Probably first time nerves. I know I couldn't do it."
Pickle approached the window that was situated in the office, and looked out onto the car park. He could see six more shuffling about in the car park; all were spaced out and the threat seemed pretty low, but he didn't want to hang about, especially the way his inexperienced group fired their pistols.
"Think we better leave," Pickle announced. "We've got company."
Chapter Thirty Six
It had only been a day and a half since the warning came through on the radio. At first he thought it was a hoax, or he had accidentally received a station that was broadcasting a science fiction audio book. The more he listened, the more the information was sponged by his disbelieving brain.
This was no prank, and this was no audio book either…this was the real thing. It seemed ridiculous that something like this could happen.
But why not!
He thought about the documentary he had watched on malaria, which kills millions a year, one every thirty seconds.
Hundreds of years ago it was the bubonic plague that killed twenty five million people across Europe, and another twenty five million across the globe. Just because medical science had moved on dramatically over the centuries, it didn't mean that man was safe from every living virus that threatened mankind.
To Gary Jenson, it was the nature of the virus that unnerved him and had caused mass panic on his wing. Paranoid that the officers had known about this through the night and had left them to their own devices, the prisoners banged their doors with their fists, and he was one of them hammering the steel. His hands were still smarting from that panic-stricken incident. Some prisoners were irate, some even wept, as there was no immediate response to their torment.
When Jamie Thomson finally opened his door, Gary's panic had subsided once he had time to think. He sat motionless on his bed and calmly slurped on his coffee that he had made five minutes before. He heard the excitement of the voices, as one by one the doors were opened, and after ten minutes, the wing fell silent.
Gary didn't understand the excitement of the other prisoners that were being released. Sure, they were now free men, but free in what kind of world? Maybe they had family they wanted to see. Maybe they were confident of getting to their homes, being with their families, and remaining there until the virus had passed. Maybe after the virus had passed, they thought that they could start again, and live as free men. Despite it turning into a horrific world out there, Gary thought that the opportunity for most of the inmates was too much to resist.
He, on the other hand, had other ideas. At first he wanted to stay. He thought he was the only one stupid enough to stay. The plan was to stay behind and hope in a matter of weeks that this virus would blow over. He was too much of a coward to go out there into the unknown.
He had a girlfriend, but aside from that the only family member he had left was his father, and the abusive drunken old man was a waste of space who Gary wouldn't piss on if the old man were on fire. Gary had already come to the conclusion that he would rather take his chances inside. Even more so once he stepped out of his cell.
Now with his coffee in his right hand, he walked out of his cell and stood on the first floor balcony, looking over the ground floor of the wing. The slider doors were left open, and the crack of light that spilled onto the wing near the canteen, suggested that the exercise yard door had been left open, too.
Gary raised a wry smile once he had noticed this. In his own cell, he had a huge jar of coffee, plenty of cigarettes, tins of tuna, and bread. On the wing's canteen, he knew they had cupboards of biscuits and sandwiches, and whatever else was left in the other cells from the inmates.
He walked across the balcony and trotted down the steel steps with his mug still in his right hand. He walked the full length of the ground floor to the slider, and peered into the other three wings. There was one inmate that he saw, who was strolling around the place on his own. He seemed to have the same idea as Gary. But what if there were others, many others, and they were still in their cells?
Gary took one last gulp of his coffee and placed the mug on the floor and took the black liner out of the plastic bin. Fortunately, apart from some cans and a banana skin, the bag was empty, as the bin had been recently changed.
He went round all the cells on his wing and was pleased to see every inmate, apart from himself, had left. He was unsure whether the rest of the wings were vacant and told himself that he would worry about that another day.
He collected as much food as he could and put them in the black bag; this process took thirty minutes to execute. He had enough to last weeks, and felt he needed to do this on that particular Sunday before someone else beat him to it. He had spent most of his Sunday sitting around on his bed, smoking cigarettes, and waiting for other inmates from other wings from house block two to introduce themselves, but it never happened.
It was now Monday afternoon, and the boredom was killing him. He couldn't possibly survive in his cell with no working TV. He had a working stereo, like other inmates had, but he felt it was too early to announce to the whole of house block two that someone else had stayed behind. He decided to do the inevitable and creep around the wings to see if there was signs of others. Initially, he was too frightened to do this, but he couldn't hide in his cell forever.
Maybe they could work together. Or maybe they would kill one another over food in order to survive. That was the risk, he thought. That was probably why the remaining inmates were keeping themselves to themselves, as they didn't know who had decided to remain inside.
Gary left his wing with ease, as each slider door of the wings were left open by the officers. It felt peculiar to leave his wing without the presence of an officer walking beside him. He walked through the opened slider door, went by the bubble, and peered into G and F wing. Although he never stepped inside, the wings were eerily soundless and this gave him a shudder. He entered E wing and like the others, it seemed desolate, but he knew that wasn't true, as he had already seen the figure on E wing lolloping around. He could tell it was an inmate and not an officer, because they were all dressed the same, with their blue trousers and red polo shirts.
Gary hesitantly walked around and decided that calling out was a bad idea. He gently walked up the steel steps to get to the first floor, trying to make as little noise as possible. All the cell doors were opened, and he peered in each cell. It appeared on this wing that everyone had decided to take their chances outside, except one. He didn't recognise the face but the poor young boy had decided that cutting his wrists was a better option than being out there, where humans were now considered food by certain individuals.
Maybe he had no family to turn to, Gary thought.
It never baffled Gary where the young boy could have got a blade from to make the insertions, it was sometimes easier to get drugs and weapons in prison than on the outside. He stared at the lifeless body; his face was light blue, he was curled up like a frightened hedgehog and the sheets were heavily stained.
"Poor bastard," Gary uttered under his breath.
He checked the last few cells and decided that he should return back to his own wing.
"Damn shame," a voice appeared behind Gary.
Shocked by the unexpected presence, he gasped and turned around.
The man was in his thirties, stocky build and his head was shaved bald. The tattoos on his forearm suggested that he was in, or used to be in, a gang before being incarcerated.
"Jason Bonser," he announced and held out his hand. "You might have heard of me."
"Gary."
The truth was, Gary hadn't been in prison long and didn't know who he was, but didn't want to say so. He felt that men like Jason Bonser thrived on reputation and the last thing he wanted to do was disrespect a gang member, who was twice the size of him, and inform him that he had never heard of him.
Gary shook his hand, and Jason squeezed his very hard. He didn't know whether it was done on purpose to make a statement, or if it was natural. If it was natural, then Jason Bonser was as powerful as he looked as far as the strength department was concerned.
"So this is it then." Gary smirked. "Just the two of us."
"Three of us, actually," Bonser corrected.
"Three?"
"A guy called Kyle Horan is on the other wings checking the place out. We decided to lay low for a day, now we're seeing who's stayed behind. Not many."
"What's he like?"
"He's a good guy," Bonser appeased Gary. "He's one of my crew."
"Oh."
Gary wasn't sure that two members of the same gang and him, was a great combination. Nothing had been said yet, and already he felt threatened. What happens if they want him out the way? What would they do if they found he had a cell full of food? He wished he had stayed in his cell now, but with the two of them now starting to search the wings, he came to the conclusion that it would only be a matter of time before he would be found anyway.
Kyle Horan finally made an appearance and bellowed to Bonser. "Well, that's been taken care of!"
"Erm...Kyle." Bonser turned around to his colleague and pointed at Gary. Noticing him for the first time, Kyle stopped in his tracks.
"A new guy," Kyle spoke, but his voice seemed mocking and a little threatening to Gary. "I don't know his face."
These two individuals were hardcore, Gary had convinced himself. These two figures that stood before him were probably inside for gang killings, whereas he was in for stealing cars. If these two began to turn nasty, he wouldn't stand a chance.
"So what cell are you in, Gary?" Jason asked him.
He didn't have time to think. "H sixty-seven," he lied.
"H sixty-seven? Let's have a look in your cell."
Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3) Page 20