"Do me a favour?" KP asked Karen, who was staring out of the window as the last remaining beings of the crowd slammed their hands against the side of the van.
"What is it?"
"Pass me a bullet," KP ordered with a sad smile.
"What for?" Karen and Pickle both asked collectively.
The van was now progressing nicely along the long country road, heading towards Upper Longdon; the beings had disappeared from view.
"For me." KP pulled his sleeve back and revealed a small bite mark. It was small, but it was a bite all the same. "One of them got me up there, as we were trying to get in the van."
Pickle began to shed tears and repeated the word no constantly when he saw the wound. His reaction touched, yet, confused Karen.
Karen knew that KP was infected and never hesitated as she emptied the magazine from one of her guns and passed KP the one solitary bullet he asked for.
"Stop the van," KP demanded.
"No chance," came Pickle's reply, wiping his blurry eyes with his forearm, staining his combat shirt that he had taken from the supermarket.
"Come on, don't be a hypocrite. You had to kill Laz. I shot Davina. Now it's my turn." KP put the barrel of the Browning to his left temple. "If you don't stop, I'll do it right here. I don't know how long I've got before I turn into one of them. Could be hours, could be less."
Karen put her magazine back into the pistol and turned to Pickle. "Just stop the van."
The van came to an abrupt halt, and Pickle slammed his forehead on the steering wheel and began to sob gently.
KP touched Karen's face affectionately and opened the door, slammed it shut and went around to the driver. KP opened the driver's side of the door, and stared at Pickle who refused to look at the man. KP could feel himself getting emotional and fed off Pickle's distress. He touched Pickle's face tenderly, leaned over to him and kissed him on the cheek.
"Goodbye, Harry Branston." KP managed a thin smile. "I love you."
Pickle's head remained on the steering wheel and found it too hard to look at KP, let alone, say goodbye.
KP shut the door firmly and walked away onto the main road that was surrounded by, what seemed like, an everlasting forest. KP disappeared into the darkness and was never to be seen again.
Pickle raised his head off the steering wheel and looked in his wing mirror, and even though his lover was maybe only yards away, only darkness could be seen.
He composed himself and slowly drove away, and tried to keep his emotions intact with little success. It was clear to Karen that she was now sitting next to a broken man. He continued to drive slowly, as the tears were making his vision impaired. Karen sat silently and looked at the distressed Pickle; her feelings were becoming fragile also, as she felt for her driver.
She realised that she had forgotten to thank KP for saving her life; she looked in her side mirror in hope that he was still there, but he had gone. Pickle revved the van hard and had kept it in an unnecessary lower gear. She was about to advise him to change gear and then suddenly stopped herself, as she had an idea why he was doing it.
The loud revving continued as the van loudly growled through the snaky roads. The audible revving of the engine did make them more vulnerable as far as attracting the dead were concerned, but it was also loud enough to drown out a gunshot. KP's eventual gunshot.
Pickle turned the van at a sharp right bend, and finally slipped it into a higher gear it craved.
Karen took a look in the glove compartment and took out some hankies. She began to use them to wipe away some of the debris on the passenger side door where Pickle had shot one of them, but she was running out off hankies to remove the stubborn liquid. She wound down the window and threw the used tissues out, pulled the window back up and gawped at the distraught driver once more.
"About KP," she began. "I'm sorry. I didn't know that you two…"
Suddenly a figure could be seen up ahead. Pickle increased the pressure on the gas pedal, as he was unsure if it was a ghoul or not. As he passed the figure to his left, nearest to Karen in the passenger seat, it looked to be a young man and he began to frantically wave. Karen's eyes followed the man and could see, thanks to the headlights, in dark blue letters on his white T-shirt: 'Slightly Damaged Human.'
"He was human," she announced, as the van went by him.
Pickle remained transfixed, looking through the windscreen and shrugged his shoulders. "Yeah, well. Good luck to him."
He never stopped for the frightened individual; he had no intention of stopping, but Karen refrained from trying to persuade him. Pickle was hurting, and a confrontation about picking somebody up they didn't even know was something Karen decided to avoid. She didn't want to start a fight with a man that had just lost his lover.
She then thought about Jamie and Janine. Her throat began to swell.
Chapter Fifty Three
Jack's eyes remained staring at the ceiling, a mental exercise he had been performing for the last hour. He looked at the digital alarm clock. It was Wednesday, 5:23am.
He wondered if Gary in the other room had slept. The main reason for Jack's mild insomnia was excitement, because he was hours away from seeing his son. He roughly estimated that he was lucky to have got three hours, which even then, had three intermissions.
The first intermission was getting up at 1am for a pee, the other two interruptions that woke him were due to noises coming from outside. A faint scream from a woman was heard that either sounded that it was from a distance, or it occurred within a building. Nevertheless, it was enough to wake Jack and spring him out of bed to rush towards the bedroom window.
He was situated in the back bedroom, whereas Gary was in the front bedroom that overlooked the main road the house was on. All Jack could see was acres of back gardens, belonging to the residents of the street. It was frustrating that he couldn't see anything, and for all he knew, Gary could be fast asleep whilst there were hundreds of the dead piling onto the main road. Jack was hoping that this wasn't the case, as the more populated the area, the less chance and hope they had to leave the house to get to the Longdon Village Hall.
Jack decided enough was enough and got off the bed where he remained fully-clothed. He put his shoes on, that sat at the end of the bed where he had kicked them off, and gave off a sigh of frustration. He was hoping for two things: he was hoping that Gary was already awake, and that the street wasn't littered with those critters.
He crept towards the bedroom door and entered the landing area. He went into the bathroom and emptied his bladder. He could have been quieter but was sort of hoping that his movement would stir Gary. Jack couldn't delay any further; he wanted to see his son.
"Jack." Gary's voice came from the front bedroom. "Come in here."
Jack smiled and left the bathroom without flushing the toilet.
Without washing his hands, he entered the front bedroom to see a fully-dressed Gary Jenson with the palms of his hands flat on the windowsill, standing and gaping outside.
Jack walked over to the window and stood next to his new buddy. Shit!
Jack couldn't believe what he was seeing. "How many, do ya think?"
Gary shrugged his shoulders. "A hundred, maybe two."
Both men looked out and saw hordes of the dead rambling around the street, sometimes clumsily walking into streetlights that were still working, and sometimes walking into one another. Jack and Gary knew from first-hand experience that this dopey look they had shouldn't be seen as a weakness, for as soon as they saw what they deemed as food, their eagerness and quickness was surprising, yet frightening at the same time.
"We're never gonna get out of here," Jack said; his voice was downbeat and drenched in negativity.
"We should be okay. I think the brighter the day is, the less they are in numbers. According to the announcement, they're not big fans of the light, so let's pray for the sun, or we might be in for a struggle later today."
"Look at the fuckers!" Jack snarled with hatred
. "It's as if they know there're people here. So where do you think they go during the day?"
Gary shook his head. "Dunno, a place where there's a better chance of food. Maybe a place where there's shelter from sunshine."
"The woods?"
"Yep, maybe. And what are we surrounded by?"
Jack half-laughed and shook his head in defeat. "The woods."
"So just because we can't see many of them during the day, doesn't mean we're not surrounded. I think staying on the roads is the safest all round option. Don't get me wrong; what I heard on the radio was probably bullshit, guesswork. You know what these so-called experts are like. They don't have the words I don't know in their vocabulary, they would rather make up some shit rather than admit that they don't know, or that they were wrong.
"But what I did notice is that now two nights in a row, they seem to appear from nowhere, and when the day turns, a large percentage of them, not all of them, seem to disappear somewhere else."
Jack continued to gawp at the scene that was making the hairs on his arms stand tall. "Well, if your theories are correct, the winter is gonna be a fucking massacre. You know what Britain's like in the height of winter; sometimes it gets dark at 4pm and can stay like that for about fourteen hours."
"We'll give it another hour or so, then I'll jump over and steal that silver Mazda over there."
Jack raised his hand and began waving. Gary wondered what he was doing; he looked across the street and saw a young girl, about eight, looking out of her bedroom window, clutching onto her teddy for comfort.
The girl waved back, and an arm grabbed her by the shoulder and gently pulled her away from the window by her father. He looked across to Gary and Jack, and gave them a polite wave, they both waved back, and the father—they assumed—closed the curtains.
"When's this all gonna end?" Jack sighed and sounded like a beaten man.
Gary snickered falsely and said, "This is just the beginning. We're only into the early hours of day…five? Six? Just look in that short space of time how many people we know have been taken from us. This is a holiday compared to what is waiting for us later on. This is only gonna get worse, and there'll be more of them, you mark my words. And as the weeks go by, and as they grow in numbers, food and water will disappear. God help us all then."
Jack knew what Gary was saying was correct; his comment wasn't appreciated, but surprising, considering Gary was the confident one a day ago, talking about humans surviving this disaster. Maybe he was changing his mind.
Jack was hoping for some kind of positivity from his new friend, some hope. Jack felt that, although tired and down beaten, he felt he should be the one to raise spirits and say something upbeat. He knew that if all hope was lost, there'd be no point in carrying on.
Jack added, "I'm sure there'll be many survivors when this blows over. Let's hope we become some of the lucky ones."
"The lucky ones." Gary tittered mockingly, not meaning to antagonise Jack, but did all the same.
"Did I say something funny?" Jack sniped with gritted teeth.
"My friend," Gary patted Jack on the back, "the lucky ones are already dead."
*
They had stopped for a few hours to rest, but sleep was impossible while they were still near the woods. The van purred along the roads that were now beginning to be easier to see since the sky had turned up its brightness, and the van eventually came to a halt. Pickle pulled up the parking brake and sat silently, staring along the country road. They hadn't passed a single house or farm for the last mile and he needed to stop to clear his eyes.
"What's wrong?" Karen had to ask. She knew there were many things that were wrong, but something new was irritating him.
"Many things," Pickle replied in a whisper.
"Okay, what's wrong right now?"
Pickle released a depressing sigh. "I don't even know where to go."
"Just go somewhere quiet and try and get some sleep," Karen suggested. "We have plenty of food to last us for a few days at least, and the van is still practically full of fuel."
Pickle sat in a sad state; his perky character had been sapped over the days, and Karen had noticed that the man she had met in the woods was different to the one that now sat next to her. There was only so many kicks in the stomach one man could take, and she feared that he was losing the will to live.
"Is this the way it's gonna be from now on? Struggling to survive?"
"Yep," Karen snapped coldly.
Pickle looked at Karen and wondered what the twenty-three-year-old nurse used to be like. Did she used to be funny? Go out drinking at the weekends with her friends? Was she romantic? Did she used to cry at the sad classics? Did she ever want a family? Whatever she used to be, Pickle was sure that the person sitting next to him was a lot different to the one that was working in a hospital and looking after patients a week ago.
"Do yer ever think about him?" Pickle licked his dry bottom lip, awaiting Karen's answer.
"If you're referring to my boyfriend, Gary, then, yes, of course. But he's dead, probably like most of my family and friends as well. I try not to think about it."
"It's just…" Pickle paused and didn't want to offend or start a petty argument with Karen. "You seem a bit…like a cold fish."
Karen's facial expressions told Pickle that she was agreeing with him. "I'm not a heartless bitch. I can tell you now; I did nothing but cry for the first night. It's not going to bring him back, neither is self-pity. You need to man-up and stop feeling sorry for yourself."
Pickle's face was like thunder; he was torn in three whether to shoot her, verbally abuse her, or ignore the rash comment that she had just made.
"Okay, maybe that was a little harsh." She smiled apologetically. "You lost your partner only hours ago, and I'm saying stuff like that. I'm sorry."
Pickle was amazed by the power of the apology.
Seconds earlier he wanted to harm her, and now those two words seemed to quash his temper very rapidly. He liked her again, but was still baffled, yet, encouraged by her mental toughness and determination to continue living. He thought that she was still hurting and was putting up a front. He felt that she was a little reckless, and back at the crossroads she seemed too trigger-happy, as if she was enjoying the situation, which he thought might be a concern in the future.
It had been a mad few days, and even his most bloody of weekends as a drug dealer had nothing on this. He threw his mind back to the Wolseley Arms and the night he, KP, Janine, Jamie, Laz and Grass had. It was probably the best night he had had in years; and then his mind wandered to the dark side of the last few days: Grass' horrific death, having to shoot Laz, losing Davina. Then there was the two officers, responsible for his freedom, dying, and of course, KP.
He wiped a solitary tear that threatened to fall from his left eye and thought about David and Isobel. He hoped that they had found somewhere safe to stay.
He started the van up and slipped the gear stick into first.
"You made a decision?" Karen asked the question, while checking the remaining magazines she had.
Pickle looked at the two guns that Karen was holding, and although they were two Brownings down, after Jamie's attack and KP walking off with the other to end his own life, he realised that he was still better off than most and made a promise that from now on, self-pity was banned from his list of emotions. Karen's fighting attitude had to be the correct one in order to survive in this world, and at the moment, she was putting him to shame.
Pickle told Karen that there was a multi-storey car park a mile up the road by the village of Hazelslade, near the town of Cannock. They were going to drive to the place, providing it was safe, stay there for a few more hours to sleep, and then think about what they were going to do next with fresh heads, rather than with the tired ones they had at the moment.
It took nearly ten minutes to get there, and the van parked up at the top of the desolate car park on the fourth floor. Pickle blew out a long, drawn out breath and pu
t his arms behind his back to stretch.
He pushed out his chest so hard he felt he could crack his sternum. He opened the driver's side of the door and got out, Karen followed suit.
They both stretched their legs and wandered over to the edge of the floor. They both leaned with their stomachs against the wall, overlooking the villages and towns. The view was perfect and daylight was beginning to creep up to start another day, and knowing the events that were occurring below them was the only thing putting a dampener on the experience.
"We'll need to invest in some goggles," Karen joked, but her quivering face wasn't fooling Pickle. She was on the verge of tears.
At last, he thought. Some humanity.
"What for?" he questioned.
"If we kill these things at close range, there's a good chance blood can get in your eye. Oh, gonna need a respirator as well, but then again, you tend to get used to the smell after a while."
Pickle sighed and spoke, "Could do with a katana or some other type of sword. These bullets won't last forever."
The cool air that caressed their faces was glorious, and both closed their eyes as the light wind massaged their damp scalps.
Pickle still had his eyes closed. "Do yer read, Karen?"
She nodded, and opened her eyes to look at the man to the side of her. "I used to, why?"
"Sometimes that was all there was to do in prison. I remember reading a quote that said: Sometimes, even to live is an act of courage. I think I know what they mean now. In the future, we're gonna have to do some remarkable and horrific things in order to survive."
"It's gonna be scary times ahead," Karen agreed. "But if we let these things terrify us, life won't be worth living."
"Are yer a religious person, Karen?" Pickle was still enjoying the fresh air and breathed in a large gulp of it, with his eyelids still firmly shut.
"Not really."
"I remember a passage in the book of Zechariah. It went something like this: Their flesh will rot while they are still standing, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. On the day, men will be stricken by the Lord with great panic. Neighbours will engage in hand combat against each other. That's what is happening now! Even if yer a non-believer, yer have to admit, that's some freaky shit."
Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3) Page 33