He went past Slitting Mill, turned left on the Hednesford road and headed for the Stile Cop road. He saw a burnt out Porsche to his left and as his car went up the massively steep road, he could see a few bodies to the side, near the grass bank, opposite the cemetery.
As the car got to the brow of the hill, he could see that down the road was littered with crushed bodies. "What the fuck happened here?"
He slowed down, turned left, and pulled into the Stile Cop beauty spot, and noticed that it wasn't much better there either. He got out off the car, hoping that this place could be a safe haven for one night, and stepped out onto the sandy floor. He was torn whether to go back to the farm or not, but he was in fear from his colleagues—if they were alive—that he had left in the lurch.
He looked around the beauty spot. People had been here. It was obvious.
There was a black patch on the ground where a fire or two had been lit, and he guessed that maybe a small gang had dwelled up here for a few days before moving on. But it wasn't the old fire that made him curious, it was the amount of bodies that were on the floor. He couldn't count how many altogether, but some had been shot in the cranium.
He shook his head and could not fathom what had happened up here. It appeared that nowhere was safe, and thought that maybe he should stay at the farm and stay awake, and just hope that none of his guys would turn up, especially that psycho, Gordon.
He heard a moan from the side of him as if one was still alive; he jumped with fright and jumped into the car once he saw at least three of the fifty-plus bodies, wriggling and trying to move along the sandy surface.
The car screeched out of the place and he closed his eyes when the Ford Focus ran over the deceased bodies lying on the tarmac, and once he had got by the last body, he decided to go straight across the crossroads and head for the farm. He looked over his shoulder to see if there was anything behind him, turned back round and breathed out a sigh of relief.
The last thing he saw, was the side of a black jeep that his car then collided with.
Chapter Fifty One
Once both exhausted girls had went by the football field, they walked into the street, both carrying bags. Karen made a joke that the remaining residents of this particular street must have been sick of the sights of her, but Shaz never responded to Karen's chat.
Shaz pointed to a house on the left and said, "I'd been staying in there for a bit. The house was empty when I turned up, and it has a cupboard full of clothes."
"Good." Karen nodded. "It'll be good to get some new clothes while we can. We've got detergent back at the cabin from the looting, but I feel a bit uncomfortable wasting water just to wash clothes. Seems a bit of a waste, especially if Wolf's water system packs up. It's not great as it is, and we'd have to end up using the stream in the woods."
Changing the subject, Shaz looked around and said, "There's always the option of staying in one of these houses, if you get sick of the cabin."
"There is, " Karen agreed, "but to be honest, that cabin is the safest we've been since this shit started to happen. Pickle's also paranoid about people in general. I mean, it's only been three weeks since the outbreak and we've come across these fucks," Karen pointed at the dead body of Wiry. He had eventually bled to death. "So what's it gonna be like in the long-term?"
"About what happened here," Shaz spoke up. "I was napping. If I could see you and your friend were in trouble, I would have helped earlier. It wasn't until the explosion—"
"That's okay." Karen smiled and patted Shaz's back. She was liking this woman already. "You don't have to explain. Why should you have helped? You didn't even know who we were."
Karen scanned the street and noticed that the guy with the black, greasy hair with the cut face, was missing. After she had swiped his face with the machete, she became somewhat distracted with everything else that had been going on. The blood where he once lay was present, but he had disappeared somewhere.
They walked into the house and Karen took a look around the ground floor, the bag was hanging off her left shoulder. "How did you manage?"
Shaz replied, "Like everybody else; I used everything in the cupboards and rationed it."
"Clothes upstairs?" Karen had no idea why she asked such a silly question. Of course the clothes were upstairs.
"Bedroom," Shaz said. "I'll be up in a sec." Sharon took a walk into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of flat vimto from the cupboard and swallowed the whole lot down. She made an exaggerated ah sound, belched softly, and then made a decision to go upstairs and help Karen fill her bag.
Shaz looked around the place she had called 'home' for a few days, and thought about her own house. She had literally been on the run since she witnessed the macabre scene of her husband killing her child, and she had been hopping from one house to the next ever since.
The longevity of her stay always depended on how safe or unsafe she felt.
After the small invasion of the four bandits, as well as a few ghouls, Shaz felt that the stay in the street was unwise, and felt lucky to be offered to stay in such a place like the cabin, and was grateful to Pickle for asking her, even though it wasn't his place. She had remembered the cabin as a child when she used to play on Cardboard Hill, but back then children never went near it. To the kids it was either uninteresting to them, or they were too scared to approach it because the older children had filled their heads full of horror stories about the place.
Because it had been years since she had been up there, she was unsure the place still existed until Pickle gave her the invite. It had changed somewhat since her childhood, and the huge overgrown greenery and the fence that surrounded the area that prevented anyone from actually noticing the cabin, was never there before.
Shaz heard a thud coming from above her and assumed that Karen had already started picking out clothes. She turned and began to walk upstairs. She walked into the bathroom and had a wee. After wiping herself, she stepped back out of the bathroom and went into the master bedroom.
Her face was devoid of emotion; her eyes glared, but never blinked, and her body never flinched once she saw the cold steel pressing against Karen's throat.
The greasy-looking man had his left arm hooked around Karen's neck, and with his right hand he held the blade.
"Well, well, well," he said in a mocking voice. "I have the pleasure of two bitches for company."
The man had long, greasy hair, tied back. He looked like he needed a good wash, had a terrible smile inbetween all of his facial hair, and a huge cut to his face that now looked like it had stopped bleeding.
"So what did you come back for?" he snarled in Karen's ear. "To finish me off? More food?"
Karen winced once she smelt his breath and he had noticed this, and reacted by squeezing her throat tighter with his left arm as if he was insulted by her reaction. The blade was now pressed harder, drawing a little blood.
He growled down Karen's ear, "If it wasn't for you and your male friend, we'd be okay."
Karen responded, "It's greed that has caused you and your friend's downfall, not me. We just took from empty places, and not from people."
"Proper little girl scout, aren't you?" His anger produced spit to leave his mouth; some dribbled onto Karen and ran down her ear, but she never flinched. "You and your friend have fucked things up for me, good and proper."
Karen laughed mockingly, which Shaz thought was a brave—or maybe, stupid—thing to do, considering that the man she was mocking had a blade to her throat. "It's called karma. You set up a roadblock and gunned down a middle-aged couple because they didn't give you what you wanted. God knows what else you've done."
"Just trying to survive, darling." He then began to make Karen squirm a little by nibbling her ear. She was certain that this man was getting no sexual buzz from his actions; he was simply trying to press her buttons.
"What do you want?" Shaz asked, her fingers stroking the cleaver tucked in the back of her belt.
"You know what? I don't reall
y know," he cackled, and looked at Shaz. "You can get out of here, darling. But this one is staying here with me. We have some unfinished business to take care of. Go on, leave!"
"I'm afraid I can't do that," announced Shaz.
He then moved the knife from Karen's throat and placed the blade against her cheek. "She's cut me, now it's my turn to cut her."
Karen remained motionless; she was scared, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of him knowing this. She could feel his breath on the back of her head and gave Shaz a wide-eyed look as if she was trying to communicate with the thirty-year-old.
Karen dropped her head a few inches, feigning tiredness, then quickly threw her head back and connected with Mangy's nose. He released a painful yelp, and she then stamped on his foot, speedily turned around and tried to prise the knife out of his clutches by grabbing his wrist with both off her hands. It became a struggle, until Shaz ran over and struck his wrist with her cleaver.
Mangy released an awful scream, and his disbelieving eyes grew like saucers once he could see his hand hanging off of his wrist, blood escaping plentifully onto the carpet.
"You stupid bitch!" he screamed, and continued to look at the damage to his hand.
Karen grabbed the bag off of the floor while the injured man remained on his knees in the corner, and she calmly began taking clothing items from the cupboard, while the injured man fell onto his back and writhed about.
"Any preference?" she called over to Shaz, over the male screams, but Shaz shook her head and just wanted to get the hell out of there.
Once the bag was filled, Karen threw it over her shoulder and told Shaz to fill hers. Then they were leaving.
Karen walked past her and opened the door. "You coming or not?"
Shaz filled her bag and then pointed at Mangy; he was still on the floor, sobbing with the pain. "What about him?"
"Leave him. He deserves everything he gets."
Chapter Fifty Two
"Where are they? They should be here by now?"
Vince was pacing up and down on top of the HGV that was blocking the Armitage Road, and was waiting on a vehicle that had been sent out over an hour ago after their own pub excursion.
Claire quickly turned her head, making her blonde ponytail swing from side-to-side, and held her finger out to Vince, telling him politely not to utter another word. "I can hear an engine," she said.
Vince brought up the shotgun, and aimed it at the hill, ready for whatever was going to emerge over it.
It was one of his own, as he recognised the pick-up truck straight away, and this made Vince breathe some relief and even managed a smile across his face. The vehicle stopped by the HGV and waited for the thing to move so they could go through and into the camp.
Vince climbed down from the truck and sauntered over to the vehicle that had just arrived. Vince looked at the back of the truck and grinned at the faces of the men when they got out of the vehicle. Both men were carrying shotguns, and Vince asked Claire, who had just sat in the HGV ready to reverse it back and allow the truck in, to hold on for a minute.
He took a look at what they had. "There's a shit load of stuff here." Vince beamed and patted both men on the shoulders, who took the praise and seemed rather smug with themselves.
The driver said, "We had to drive a bit further out, up through the countryside, but we saw an abandoned house and basically everything that was in it is in the back of the truck."
Vince then scowled in confusion, furrowing his brow, and pointed at the two large canisters. "Is that what I think it is?"
Both men from the pick-up truck looked at one another and smiled; they were certainly in Vince's good books on this particular evening. They both nodded, and the driver added, "Two large canisters of fuel; the one on the left is diesel, we've marked them."
Vince looked to see that they had marked, faintly in chalk, petrol and diesel on each canister. "Petrol stations?"
"We tried the two that we had passed," the passenger was speaking now and began to pick his teeth with his forefinger, "but they were completely empty and raided."
To quash Vince's confusion, the driver pointed at the labelled canisters and said, "We siphoned some cars to get those."
"Fuck me," Vince laughed. "You've certainly done well tonight, lads. The diesel will be great for the generators. You can never have enough."
Claire wound the window down of the HGV and asked if they were coming in or not. Vince held his hand up at her, rudely, as if he was gesturing to the impatient woman that he was still talking and she shouldn't interrupt.
The passenger spoke, "We came across the diesel just by chance."
Vince folded his arms. "Oh?"
The driver added, "A couple of miles up the road, there's a bit of a smash. Some sporty car and a black jeep."
Vince turned around and could see that, with her window wound down, Claire could hear every word and knew that there was a good chance that inside that black jeep they were talking about was Jack Slade.
"Did you get a look inside?" asked Vince.
The driver shook his head. "We saw the bodies slumped in their seats, so we just took the gas."
Vince nodded his head and motioned for Claire to reverse the HGV back, and allow the pick-up truck through. She never responded; so he motioned again. Again, the HGV never reversed back, in fact, Claire never even started the engine.
Vince turned around and glared at her. He looked at the two men and released a sigh. "Give me a minute, will you?"
Both men nodded obediently. The driver asked, "What's going on?"
Ignoring the driver, Vince looked at Claire. "It was his decision to leave."
"I know." Claire bit her lower lip. She liked Vince. He had been good to her, but she felt under all that bravado was a man who had a kind heart. "You can't just leave him there, Vince."
"We don't even know it's definitely him."
Claire stared at Vince with those big, beautiful eyes of hers and nodded. "It is."
"I don't give a shit. He's made his bed. He can lie in it."
"He'd be a good addition to the camp. You know that."
"Yeah, once he gets rid of his soft attitude." Vince smacked the side of the HGV with the palm of his right hand, clicked his fingers and pointed at Claire. "They said that the men were slumped in their seats, so he might be dead."
She huffed, "He might not."
Vince rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. He looked back at the two men who stood patiently for their leader to make some kind of a decision.
"Okay." Vince scratched his head full of grey hair. "Can you gentleman keep guard for half an hour or so? We're gonna have to go out and pick up Claire's boyfriend," mocked Vince.
Protested Claire, "He's not—"
"Well you seem to like him, don't you?"
Claire never answered.
"Move the lorry back," Vince instructed Claire. "We'll both go out in another truck." He then pointed at the pick-up truck that the two men had returned in. "I'm not looking for him with a pick-up truck full of food and gas. If any looters out there jump us, they'll think their Christmases have all come at once."
Claire started up the engine of the lorry and reversed back with a wry smile on her face.
"Are you sure about this?" one of the men called out.
Vince nodded and joked, "I'm done arguing with her. Besides, we don't wanna be pissing her off too much. I think she might be on the blob. And in my book, anything that can bleed for a week and not die, is pure evil."
Both men began to cackle, but Claire was less than impressed.
"Come on," he looked at her morose face. "Where's your sense of humour?"
"It went weeks ago," she calmly spoke.
"Okay, we're going, lads. We won't be long."
One of the men called out, "But it'll be dark soon, Vince."
"I know, guys," Vince pointed at a determined Claire sitting in the HGV's driver's seat. "But there's two ways to argue with a woman. And
let me tell you that neither one works."
Chapter Fifty Three
Both Karen and Shaz strolled through the street and both, in unison, turned around as if it was the last time they would see it. At the end of the street was a road to the right that led into the heart of the estate, and Karen wondered that with the amount of action that this one street had seen, what else was going on in the others, even the whole town.
She remembered how her own street was when the outbreak was first announced, when there were scores of them. But was that still the situation now? Or had some rotted away and fell to the floor in pieces, and the new danger for the town now were individuals willing to kill others for their own survival.
Suddenly, behind the girls around the corner of the street, five beasts emerged and headed for the young women while their backs were turned.
"Karen." Shaz's voice was controlled when she had heard shuffling behind her, and both women faced the five ghouls lumbering towards them, rather quickly.
Karen shrugged, took off her bag, and pulled out her machete, "Jesus, these ones are really quick. Do we run or get rid?"
Shaz, without making any verbal or physical response, dropped her bag and pulled out the cleaver. She stepped forwards, struck the first one and killed it, but she struggled to release the embedded weapon. "Shit!"
The thing fell on top of her, dead. And as she struggled to get the thing off of her, another one, whose left part off the face was hanging off, made its way towards her. Karen ran forwards and took half the cranium away from a once-male that was completely naked, apart from a dirty pair of Kermit the Frog boxer shorts it was wearing. It fell with a large amount of blood gushing out onto the road as it made impact with the concrete.
Karen then set her sights on the female who was dressed in Lycra. It appeared that her trip to the gym had somewhat been rudely interrupted by the apocalypse. Karen took a swipe at the thing who simultaneously reached out to grab her, and the machete took its right hand off.
Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3) Page 82