Jack popped into the ransacked kiosk and grabbed himself two bottles of cherry coke, three packets of cigarettes and stuffed two lighters in his pocket as well. He handed the bottle to Gary who took it with him into the car.
Now they had topped up their vehicle with gas, the next plan was to go back home, sit tight and hope that Jemma would contact them somehow. There was nothing more they could do, apart from check on the two village halls on the way back, as they were running out of ideas as well as time.
Gary accelerated in the direction of Slitting Mill once more. As they approached the area some two minutes later, the Porsche slowed right down and Jack could see why.
There was at least seventy beings spread out along the main road, and there may have been more. The two men's presence was noticed immediately, and their approach towards Jack and Gary sent a shiver, as some of them were quite quick, almost at jogging speed.
Jack sighed. This is definitely the last time we're going into Rugeley.
It seemed to Jack that sooner would be better to get in contact with his son rather than later, because day by day, the population of these things appeared to be multiplying, as some of the roads weren't so desolate anymore.
The car ventured a different way and went up Sandy Lane where some roamed along the path. As they rode by the Pear Tree Estate, they got to the edge of Draycott Park where the new houses were built. The scene was horrendous; Jack opened his eyes, and both he and Gary looked at one another and shook their heads.
There were hundreds of them, and like before, they had found a release of energy as the two men gazed in horror. They looked like they had come from all walks of life; there were men, women, and children amongst the moving dead, and some seemed in better shape than others as far as the skin was concerned.
Jack noticed a handful of the beings' skin was peeling off their faces and had to look away from the repugnant image. The crowd of beings marched excitedly towards the two men, and Gary looked at Jack. "We're practically surrounded. They must have come from other towns. I'm gonna ram the fuckers. It's the only way to get through."
He slipped the sports car into first and hit the gas pedal; the wheels screeched painfully along the road, producing smoke, and the car did its job by furiously striking a bulk of the crowd. Jack's heart was in his mouth, and watched the windscreen crack as well as being decorated with blood and decay. His nerves were shot to pieces, and the relief was immense once they went by the danger zone.
Once they finally managed to drive through Draycott Park and pass the 'Welcome to Rugeley' sign—as they were now technically a hundred yards in the country and out of the town, Gary pulled the car over and saw the smoke bellowing out of the engine.
Jack stepped out of the passenger side and was aware that the things were gaining on them in their hundreds, and the mixture of groans from the beings was growing louder as they approached nearer. The damage the car had taken, after hitting so many bodies, was for all to see. Gary didn't need to be a qualified mechanic to tell him that the car was beyond repair.
"Not now!" Gary exclaimed, and hit the bonnet with his fist.
He grabbed the duster from the glove compartment and leaped out of the car and didn't need to pop open the bonnet, he knew what the problem was.
Jack grabbed his sleeve and said with dark derision, "A bit late to be cleaning the car now, don't you think? Let's go."
Gary shrugged him off and demanded. "Give me one of your lighters."
"What?"
"Stop messing about. Just do it; if we run, they'll just keep on chasing us and chasing us until we collapse. Maybe this'll block them off. Don't get me wrong, I'm as fit as they come, but they'll just keep following us."
"Fire won't kill them. Anyway, you'll just entice more of them."
"More of them?" Gary nodded over to where they were, they were already in their hundreds.
Jack reluctantly handed him one of the lighters, and Gary went to the boot and took out the heavy watering can full of gas and emptied it all over the road and underneath the car. He waited for them to gain a few more yards and then lit the duster.
He threw the burning material on the floor where he began pouring, and ran as fast as he could, with Jack following suit. The entire road, as well as the car, lit up like a napalm strike and the two men had misjudged the intense heat that came from the fire, and Jack especially, was mortified to be taken off his feet with such force. He thought he was going to break every bone in his body once he hit the road.
With just grazes to their hinge joints, they brushed themselves down, and took a few steps backwards as the fire increased. They decided to jog gently up Stile Cop Road.
It appeared that the knives that they were both carrying were still there, and as they approached the beginning of the main road to their left, they saw six of the figures stumble through the fire like drunken stuntmen, as if it wasn't there. It hadn't worked as well as Gary wanted, as the beings continued to move through the fire.
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 towards 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 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 towards 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 effe
ct 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 thumbs 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, others 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, there 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 towards 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 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 no' as if yer 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. Yer sure there was only one o' 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. 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.
Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3) Page 29