“Where’re we going?” Vince asked, but never received an answer from Harry Branston, just a cheeky smirk.
The vehicle went by the Springfield’s Estate, situated on the outskirts of Rugeley, and turned right at the roundabout, passing The Stag’s Leap pub and restaurant. Pickle then took the vehicle down Wolseley Road and turned left, passing St Augustine’s church and headed for Power Station Road.
“Are we going back to Colwyn?” Vince turned to Pickle, hoping for an answer this time.
Pickle chuckled and announced, “I’m going to visit someone me and Bentley helped out many moons ago. It was when we went to the supermarket and Lee came back with that tanker.”
“The tanker,” Vince sighed. “In hindsight it was that tanker that destroyed Sandy Lane, being set alight and attracting all those Rotters.”
“Theodore Davidson played a huge role,” said Pickle. “That tanker didn’t set itself alight, did it?”
“Bentley.” Vince smiled and thought of Bentley Drummle. “Now there’s a blast from the past.”
“A couple o’ minutes and we’ll be there.”
“I don’t know,” Vince groaned. “I’m a bit paranoid with all that stuff in the back of the pickup.”
“It’ll be fine,” Pickle chuckled. “Don’t worry.”
Pickle checked the rear view mirror, looking through the small square window to make sure no boxes from the back of the truck were flying out onto the road, and went through the country lane at a steady forty.
He slowed the vehicle and turned into a secluded road, but his optimism was shattered the moment he clocked the house he was going to try. He could see the door was wide open.
“That’s where I was going.” Pickle pointed at the house and then stopped the vehicle.
Said Vince, “Doesn’t look good. Who lives there?”
“A nice girl called Celia. She lives with her parents.”
“Doesn’t look like it now.”
Pickle got out of the truck and told Vince that he was going to check the place out and then they were going to head back. He told Vince that he didn’t need to go with him. Vince nodded and was happy to sit in the truck and wait for Pickle, with a sleeping David next to him.
Harry Branston approached the front door and pulled out his machete. He knocked on the door and called out Celia’s name, but there was no response.
He stepped inside and went into the living room. The place looked like it had been ransacked and not a soul could be seen. He went upstairs and checked out the bedrooms. He walked into the one where the loud buzzing was coming from, and before he went in he knew what was about to greet him.
He placed the machete back into his belt and stepped inside, gazing at the three lifeless bodies on the floor, one of them being Celia, and dropped his head. He said a small prayer and raised his head, looking at the butchered bodies.
This wasn’t the work of the dead. This was the work of malicious thugs.
He had no idea the reason why they were killed, whether it was for food or something else, but they had been dealt a shitty hand as far as their death was concerned. Pickle noticed that a severed arm, from the elbow to the hand, was lying next to the bloody bodies and could see that Celia was missing her left arm. It belonged to her, and Pickle guessed that maybe Celia had put her hands up to protect herself and had lost an arm because of this. The thugs must have been carrying swords or machetes.
Pickle wafted away the annoying winged pests and shut the door behind him, making sad steps back down to the ground floor. He stepped outside and walked over to the pickup. He turned around and took one last look at the house and got into the driver’s side.
Vince looked at Pickle. “She not there?”
“No.” Pickle fired the engine and pulled away. “Not anymore.”
“So where to now?” Vince tried to joke. “Shugborough Hall? Drayton Manor?”
“Back home.” A morose looking Pickle sighed, “I’ve had enough.”
Chapter Eighteen
The fourteen-year-old female kept the van in third, and held her breath as she swerved by an abandoned car that she hadn’t noticed on the way there. Maybe she never noticed it before because she was in the back when Elza was driving. She wasn’t entirely sure.
Stephanie Perkins finally dropped a gear when she approached a junction and turned left, passing the hexagonal stop sign in white letters and on a red background. In the old world she would have had to have stopped at the junction, pull up the parking brake, and look out for oncoming traffic, and move once it was safe to do so. But, of course, in the old world this girl of fourteen wouldn’t be driving a motorhome in the first instance.
Feeling the van struggling and screaming out for a higher gear, she slammed her left foot down on the clutch and moved up to third, and then fourth. She felt like she was getting the hang of it, but her calf muscles were beginning to cramp from all the stretching. She guessed that she had a couple of miles before reaching Colwyn Place, and her eyes began to fill when she thought about the demise of Elza and Ophelia, especially Elza.
She had had doubts about Elza, about whether she was mentally stable or not, and was growing uncomfortable in her presence when staying at Colwyn. Despite this, she still cared for the woman, and knew that Elza had a fondness for her. Now she was dead, just like everybody else that Stephanie had cared for or loved, and the only remaining person she had left was Vince. She liked Karen and Pickle, but she didn’t really know them that well.
Stephanie had saved Vince, by dragging him from the banks of the River Trent. She nursed him, she got to know him. And after a very brief stay at Colwyn Place, the two of them went to Sandy Lane, but unfortunately were split from one another when the place was attacked by the dead.
Still in fourth, she continued along the country road, trying to ignore two dead mutilated bodies to her left, and could see a road up ahead, to the right, that she knew she had to take. She turned into the road and began to speed up, but she took her foot off the gas pedal when a deer sprinted out of the bushes and across the road, missing the van by inches.
She braked again, forgetting to put the clutch down, and the van went left and had gone onto a grassy bank. She had stalled the vehicle for a second time.
Cussing under her breath, Stephanie decided to take a breather and rested her head on the steering wheel, trying to get her breath back and getting her heart rate down to a normal level.
An image of Elza’s body skated across her mind and Stephanie could feel her eyes filling again. She leaned over to the passenger seat, pulled out some hankies from the glove compartment and let herself go.
With her head bowed and her hands flat over her face, the young girl cried and didn’t manage to get herself together until some five or six minutes later. Her vision was blurred, like looking out of a window during a rainstorm. Despite this, she tried to fire the engine. On the first attempt it failed to start; the second time the engine was running, but she couldn’t move the large vehicle. She guessed that it was stuck in the muddy grass.
She decided to try in a few more minutes, but first she needed to soak up the tears that were drowning her eyes.
She wiped her cheeks with the hankies and then dried her eyes. She then jumped when a small sound came from the driver’s door to her right. She looked and stretched her face with aghast.
There were three of the dead by the door, trying to claw their way through to get at Stephanie. She looked ahead and placed her right hand on the ignition, ready to try the engine once more, and managed a small cry.
Half a dozen creatures were in front of the van and two more had stumbled out from the left side, out of the bushes, and staggered into the road. They joined their other dead beings, surrounding the van, and Stephanie took a quick look in her side mirror and could see more approaching from behind.
She decided not to try the engine again. She didn’t want to attract any more and she thought it’d be better not to be seen. She climbed into the back, ov
er the tins of food, and sat on one of the chairs at the dining table, waiting for the dead to pass.
She placed her elbows on what part of the table she could, as a lot of tins and boxes were on there, and dropped her head in her hands.
A migraine began to engulf her, and she screwed her eyes as her temples felt the sharp needling. Lifting her head up, she began to rub her temples with her fingers and looked around for some water. She was convinced she was dehydrated.
She picked up a bottle that Ophelia had been drinking on the way up and gulped down the rest of the water, about a third of a litre.
She had no idea what the time was. She guessed it was around late afternoon.
She could hear the awful moaning sound from outside and it appeared to be getting louder. She guessed that more of those dead bastards had arrived, but she didn’t want to look. If they caught sight of her, it would only excite them. She was sure that the RV was reasonably solid, but with enough of them outside, there was no reason why they couldn’t force themselves into the vehicle.
Stephanie peered into the box that was behind her and saw large tins of beans. All the tins had ring pulls and she grabbed one and opened it. Realising she had no fork, and it would take a huge task to get to the cutlery drawer because of all the boxes stacked up inside, she shrugged her shoulders and began to eat the beans with her fingers.
It’s not as if she hadn’t done this before.
There were a few beans left at the bottom of the tin as she was finishing, but she chose to ditch the tin and licked her two fingers that she had used as a poor substitute for a fork.
The noise continued to grow outside and the sounds of hands slapping on the outside of the van continued. The intrigue was too much for Stephanie Perkins and she decided to go and have a look and check out the damage.
All curtains of every window were drawn, and she went to the kitchen window to have a peek. She peered out from behind the curtain and gasped. She had no idea what it was like now in front of the vehicle, behind it, or to the other side, but she could only assume that it was bad all around the RV, if what she could see was anything to go by.
She gulped and could see a sea of dead faces, some males, some females, but all with the same goal: to get inside and rip this young girl to pieces. Her heart skipped when a set of dead eyes gazed at her—or the crack in the curtain, she wasn’t sure, and slowly put the curtain back to where it originally was before.
Stephanie grabbed her bag and bow, then went over to the sofa. She placed her things down on the floor and began moving boxes off of the sofa and stacked them on top of the others. Stephanie had admitted that these things weren’t for budging and decided to try and move the van.
She went into the front and grabbed the keys that were dangling from the ignition. She looked out of the windscreen and could see dozens of the dead, and now they could see her.
She started the engine and smiled when it worked first time. Trying to ignore the dead in front of her, she slipped the vehicle into gear and tried to move it, but it wasn’t going anywhere. The wheels span and made a noise that was going to add to her woes and be detrimental to her safety. It was still stuck. She thrashed the vehicle, but it seemed to be making things worse.
She looked into the side mirror on the left and could see the back wheel spinning, mud flying, but going nowhere. Although the vehicle had managed to move off a grassy bank the first time she had stalled it, the vehicle was struggling on this particular patch of muddy grass.
She panicked and thought that the dead had no desire to pass. They weren’t going anywhere. They were going to be here for the night.
It looked like she was staying in the RV for the night, maybe longer, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She placed her hands over her ears as the sound of the rotting hands slapped the outside of the vehicle, desperate to get in. She eventually switched the engine off, left the front of the vehicle, and clambered back over some boxes to get back onto the sofa.
This whole trip was turning into a disaster.
Chapter Nineteen
August 26th
It was 3am and Stephanie was finding it impossible to sleep. She was exhausted, but her mind was racing and she couldn’t stop thinking about the dead surrounding the motorhome and wondering how many were now out there.
She knew their persistence was strong, but maybe, just maybe if nothing could be heard from inside the vehicle for the next six hours or so, some of the dead might disperse and finally go elsewhere. Maybe something else would distract them.
She was going to try the RV’s engine again, later on in the morning, regardless whether the dead were there or not, but she was certain that the vehicle was going nowhere. The area had had days of rain. This was only the second sun soaked day that the West Midlands had had in days and the ground hadn’t quite dried out yet.
As well as the ‘what if’ situations, memories and flashbacks were swirling around the girl’s head.
In hindsight, Stephanie should have stayed at the hangar and waited for help. Pickle and the rest knew where they were going, so if she, Elza and Ophelia hadn’t returned after a day or so, then surely people would come out looking for them. That was the only hope she had now, she thought. If she couldn’t get the vehicle to move, she was going to have to wait for help.
Colwyn wasn’t far away from where she was, so if someone did decide to go out looking for the girls, it’d be a ten to fifteen minute journey by car to where she was now.
The main problem she had was if the surroundings of the RV could hold out until that situation happened. If people were going to come out and look for her, it was probably going to be during the day. Travelling in the dark was too dangerous.
She remained lying on the sofa, suffocated by boxes of produce around her, and put her arms behind her head, thinking of yesteryear. She was trying to keep her mind off the fact that she was surrounded by dozens of creatures that would rip her apart and give her an agonising death.
Her mind was cast back to two years ago, when she was in the second year of secondary school. A boy by the name of Duane Matthews had spent the first three months of the year picking on Stephanie. He used to do the usual childish things like hiding her coat, pulling on her ponytail, but after a while it became a little too malicious. One day he had spat in her hair when they were queuing up for their biology lesson, and a week after that he had physically pulled her to the ground and emptied his water bottle over her hair in the middle of the corridor. Most kids were horrified, some laughed, but everyone was too scared to grass on the school bully for that year.
The bullying was making Stephanie depressed and she would sometimes feign illness to keep off from school, but that was the occasional day here and there.
Stephanie was a member of an archers club, but occasionally, just to mix things up, her father would take her up to the wooded Etching Hill and give her targets to practice on. They had done this for months, but one day, one Saturday morning, they could hear voices through the wooded area and her father, as usual when voices could be heard, told Stephanie to lower the bow and wait for the individuals to pass.
They waited and waited, and suddenly from out of the bushes Duane Matthews and two of his pals appeared. Duane didn’t seem bothered that Stephanie was with her father and burst into hysterics when he saw Stephanie. He began to mock the then twelve-year-old, calling her Stephanie Hood and Robin Perkins, because she had a bow in her hand. The mocking was pretty poor, as you’d expect from a twelve-year-old boy, and both father and daughter chose not to respond.
Stephanie hadn’t told her father that they were face to face with the boy that was trying to make her life a misery, and only told him about the bullying when they made their way back home. Duane and his two spotty friends weren’t shifting and Duane continued with his mocking; Stephanie had lost patience and attached an arrow to her bow and raised it, now pointing it at the cocky Duane Matthews.
She brought the arrow back
, stretching the string, and could hear her father telling her to behave and to put the bow down. At this point Duane’s friends had scampered, and Stephanie’s father was still telling his daughter off, afraid to approach her in case she accidentally released the arrow.
“Stephanie, baby.” She could still hear her father’s voice. “Put the bow down. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Stephanie remembered gritting her teeth and telling Duane that she was sick of him and he was going to die. The arrow aimed at the boy for another few seconds before he dropped to his knees and burst into tears. He begged for his life and she could also see that he had wet himself.
She lowered the bow and told him to go. Once her father snatched the bow out of her hand, he gave his daughter a severe dressing down. Stephanie tried to explain that the boy was making her life a misery at school, but her father said that her behaviour wasn’t the way to deal with such problems.
Stephanie nodded and took her reprimand, apologising to her father, but deep down she disagreed. It turned out to have a positive outcome. Duane Matthews, and nobody else for that matter, never bothered Stephanie Perkins again for the next two years.
Then the apocalypse happened.
She snapped out of her daydreaming and decided to go for another peek outside once the darkness died and the sun rose. She had come to the obvious conclusion that it was going to be impossible to sleep. She wanted to know how many of the dead were around the RV, and she also wanted to see how deep the crowd was, if there was a crowd of them.
If the crowd wasn’t deep, she could think about climbing through the sunroof and jumping off the roof of the vehicle, over the dead. This was just a desperate option, but it would be her only option if the dead started getting inside the vehicle.
She hoped that the numbers had dwindled since she last looked out. However, to her ears it sounded like there were hundreds, with the noise that was being generated, but she was convinced that it wasn’t as bad as before.
Snatchers Box Set, Vol. 4 [Books 10-12] Page 60