Pickle looked at Karen and wondered why she was so quiet, but he decided not to press her.
“A question, if yer don’t mind,” Pickle said with a smirk.
The hairy man smiled. “Sure.”
“What don’t yer have here?”
“A lot of things,” said the male guide who hadn’t introduced himself or was introduced by Drake. “But we have water filters, detergent, plenty of toilet roll, battery-powered radios and lamps, purification tablets. We also have a cistern for collecting rainwater, despite having running water anyway.” The man paused briefly, gulped, and then continued, “We also have plenty of gas; we have torches, candles, some spare clothes, amongst other shit. And the solar panels help us out with showers and light, but it’s not perfect. Thankfully, we have gas generators as well. That’ll come in handy when the winter kicks in and we get less daylight.”
“Okay.” Pickle nodded at the man and then looked at Karen again.
She could feel his look and told him, “I’m okay.”
“Right,” the man clapped his hands together and said, “I’ll show you the nursery and then we’ll head back to the staff room, back to Drake.”
“Nursery?” Pickle scratched his head.
“Yeah,” the guide began to snicker. “It’s not just men that stay here, you know.”
“I know that,” Pickle said. “I’ve seen a few women while we’ve been walking about.”
“We also have five teenagers under the age of sixteen somewhere. Two of them don’t have dads anymore, after what happened at your street a week or so ago.”
“Oh.” Pickle lowered his head.
“We also have seven kids, all under the age of twelve, at the nursery. Which is where I’m taking you now. You’ll get to meet Jody who runs the small place.”
“Can’t wait.” Pickle smiled.
*
Drake knew that he had about twenty minutes before Karen and Pickle would return. He sat in silence in the old staff room of the hospital. He told some of his guys that he didn’t want to be disturbed and that he needed some time to himself.
As always, his guys obediently nodded and Drake headed into the room. Aware there was no lock on the door, he picked up a chair and placed it against the door to prevent people from coming in, just in case some were unaware of his instruction.
He went over to the fridge and grabbed himself a bottle of water, and then went over to the couch and slumped in it.
He unscrewed the bottle and sighed before taking his first swig of the clear liquid. He gazed into nothingness and began to lose himself for a while, thinking of nothing in particular.
He looked at the battery-powered clock on the wall that was above the sink, and could feel his throat tightening.
He was dreading tomorrow. He was dreading August 29th.
That date would have been his and his wife’s twenty-second wedding anniversary.
He grunted, trying to reduce the swelling in his throat, paranoid that somebody might try and come in, and stood up and walked over to the sink. He crouched down, opened the cupboard under the sink, and put his hand underneath the pot that was never used. He pulled out a photograph and went back over to the couch. He finished the water in one sitting, sat back and held the photograph with both juddering hands.
It was a picture of his wife and his seven-year-old son. The photo had been taken on his phone and he had had it printed for his office table, back in the old world. Now, it was all he had left; the only reminder that once upon a time life used to be good.
He thought back to when he had taken the photo. It was at a park, taken four months ago in May, and Drake had remembered that his son, Jack, had fallen off of a roundabout and had grazed his elbow, minutes after the photo was taken. He remembered the inconsolable child running straight to his mother, and all three having to leave early.
A month later, they were both dead.
On the day of the announcement, Drake was out with his group, planning on riding out to Great Wyrley, and the news began to filter through his and the other guy’s phones that things were happening, macabre things. They all went their separate ways and headed for their homes. Drake stayed at Brereton, a town next to Rugeley, and had returned home on the evening to find the remains of Jack and Coral, his wife, on the front lawn, with his street also awash with the dead. He screamed as he saw his son’s little decapitated head and the body of his wife with her insides out, and began attacking the dead like a maniac with his bare fists, until they overpowered him.
How he never got bitten, he would never know.
There were so many of the dead that he had to abandon his bike and fled his street on foot, tears still running down his face. He fled to the woods and phoned his pals. Some of their stories were similar to Drake’s, but there were some whose families were okay. A lot of his men had contacted Drake by phone and decided to meet up with him, although some remained in their homes with their families and tried to ride it out in their own way.
Wrath of Evil was just a name. They weren’t a gang that terrorised people or were into organised crime; they were simply a group of men who liked to ride out twice a week, enjoy the outdoors, and visit a pub once in a while. However, it didn’t take long for Drake to kill his first human, and after that he did what was necessary to protect his gang. His wife and son’s death had clearly affected him mentally.
They went from one place to the next, until they reached Stafford, and since he had stayed at the old hospital he had mellowed a little and wasn’t as vicious as he used to be in the beginning.
He looked at the photograph of Coral and Jack and ran his finger down his son’s face. He and his mother were smiling, had their heads together, and were standing by the baby swings, near the pond.
Drake lowered his head and sobbed for a few seconds, but suddenly pulled himself together when a knock came at the door. It couldn’t have been Karen and Pickle returning, he thought. They’d only been gone for a short time.
“What the fuck is it?” he snapped.
“Erm...” was the only sound he heard from behind the door.
“Wait a minute!”
Drake went over to the sink and splashed his eyes. He then grabbed a tea-towel and rubbed his face. He went over to the door, moved the chair, and opened it to see a man in his twenties. He was called Gary Bond and was an incompetent arsehole that Drake had never warmed to.
“What is it, Gary?” Drake huffed.
“Erm... we ... we…” Gary was nervous, he always was in Drake’s company, and was struggling to string a sentence together.
“Come on, you stuttering cunt,” Drake hissed. “Out with it.”
“We have a problem,” was all that Gary could release.
“Problem? What kind of problem?”
“With the tomatoes in the greenhouse.”
“What in cunt’s name are you talking about?” Drake scratched his shaved head and hunched his shoulders at Gary Bond, waiting for an answer from the nervous young man. But Drake wasn’t getting one.
“Speak up, son,” Drake snapped, losing patience. “I haven’t got all fucking day, you know.”
“The tomatoes…” Gary was now shaking with nerves and tried again. His second attempt of stringing a sentence together was a success. “The tomatoes have gone all funny, off.”
“So, why are you bothering me with this shit? Isn’t Henry in charge of produce?”
“I … I can’t find him.”
Drake rubbed his eyes and sighed, “And that’s my problem because…”
“Um…”
“Sort it. And if you bother me again about trivial things, you’ll be getting a kick in the bollocks.”
“But you said last week that you need to know everything what’s going on.”
“Not everything, you stupid bastard.” Drake narrowed his eyes at Gary and shook his head in disbelief at his stupidity. “I was talking about things that affect security, you gormless cunt.”
“Oh, okay.”
Gary lowered his head and looked close to tears.
“Now fuck off, and see next time you need a shit, I don’t need to know about it. Understand?”
“Yes.” Gary kept his head lowered. “Sorry, Drake.”
Drake huffed and slammed the door shut, shaking his head. “Fucking bell end.”
Chapter Forty Seven
After the nearly half-hour tour, Karen and Pickle had returned. They stepped into the staff room, Drake thanked the man that had taken them round, and their host asked Karen and Pickle to take a seat in a room which used to be the staff room that Karen used to use, whenever she was allowed a rare break.
Karen smiled when she saw the room and more memories came flooding back. The place had hardly changed. Drake informed them that the room was a bloodbath when he first arrived, and the cleaning chemicals that the hospital had stored away were put to good use.
Karen and Pickle took a seat near the window, and Karen shook her head in disbelief at how weird the situation was. There was a couch and eight chairs around a table. She envisaged Dr Stellar from Orthopaedics sitting at the end of the couch, her friend Staff Nurse Katie Marley sitting at the end, munching on a red apple she always use to have before her sandwich, and Jason Bennett, one of the porters, on his phone.
This was how the staff room was the last time she sat in it, and being back brought a tear to her eye.
She felt a hand on her thigh and heard Harry Branston ask her, “Are yer okay? Yer were a bit funny during that tour.”
“I’m fine.” She nodded. “Just getting a bit emotional, that’s all.”
Drake shut the staff room door and remained standing by the door once it was closed. He stood with his arms folded, smiled, and then went over to the sink where a kettle sat.
He asked his two guests, “Tea? Coffee?”
Both Pickle and Karen shook their heads. Neither one of them spoke.
“Okay.” Drake started and added, “Now that I’ve managed to persuade you to come here, drove you here, and also gave you a tour, I was hoping that you guys would make me a happy man.”
Both Pickle and Karen glared at Drake; no words left their lips.
“This is not me showing off and bragging that we have a better set up than you,” he chuckled.
“Isn’t it?” Pickle smirked immediately after his short query.
“Well, maybe a little.” Drake opened the fridge to pull out a bottle of water. Karen’s eyes widened. She hadn’t seen a working fridge in months. Drake offered them both a bottle of water, and this time they didn’t refuse. He passed them one each and continued with his talk as they swallowed the clear liquid down.
Drake cleared his throat and sat on a chair, looking across at Pickle and Karen. “How many guys have you got left back at that street of yours?”
Pickle shrugged his shoulders. “Not many now. We lost two girls the other day from a run. Then we had that family thing that yer already know about.”
“You lost five people in one week, didn’t you?”
“It hasn’t been a good week,” admitted Pickle.
“I take it you two have heard the term cabin fever before, right?”
Both Karen and Pickle nodded the once, unsure where Drake was going with this little speech.
“Cabin fever is extreme irritability and restlessness from living in isolation or a confined indoor area for a prolonged time.” Drake leaned back and clasped his hands together, resting them on his lap. “From what you’ve told me on the way here, you two have this situation where the tough guys go out there and put their lives at risk, whereas the not so tough guys stay in the street and suffer from boredom, possibly have depression issues as well.”
“I don’t understand where yer going with this, Drake,” Pickle said, without trying to sound rude.
“Even if you manage to bolster the numbers in your street, and let’s be honest, Craig didn’t have a successful start, then the problems are still gonna be the same. Some people are going to go out and others will stay behind and go mad. That street of yours was a great idea, but even when I’m there for a few minutes I feel claustrophobic.”
“We’re still alive,” Karen decided to chip in. “We’re still better off than most people.”
“Agreed, but why stay there when you can stay somewhere that has better facilities, places to go for walks, beds, power, safe and quiet corridors that kids could run around and play out their imaginations? We have a gym here, nursery facilities, we have—”
“I know all that,” said Karen. “I used to work here, remember? That stuff was here before the apocalypse began. You never built this place, you just cleaned the place up.”
Drake smiled as Karen finished her mild rant and wagged his finger at the female. “I like you, Karen. You have balls. I wouldn’t let some of my guys talk to me like that, but—”
“We know. You kicked one to death in the middle of our street, remember?”
“In my defence, I was having a bad day.” Drake snickered and added, “I disposed of two guys that day, something I’ve never done before, but I’m trying to be a better person.”
“You wanna know what I think?” Karen snapped, making Pickle lower his head, dreading what she was going to come out with.
Drake smiled and knew he didn’t have a choice, so he groaned, “Sure. Go on.”
“I think you’re a psychopath. And whoever disagrees with you gets a kicking.”
“We all snap, Karen,” Drake said. “This dark episode in the world has turned some people into monsters. Some people have lost their minds, whilst others have only gone mad temporarily, like I did. I came back, mentally, but some people don’t.”
“I’m not sure about you,” she admitted. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“I understand that, but I’m not entirely sure of you lot either, but I’m willing to take a chance. Are you trying to tell me that you haven’t done anything mental in the last three months?”
Pickle and Karen briefly looked at one another.
There were many episodes of madness that had occurred in their time together, but the one that leaked into Karen’s head was when she blew a man away with her Browning pistol in just the second week, after finding out that the man was bad news. She was informed by Jack Slade and Paul Parker that the man and his pal had raped their friend Gary Strand in a supermarket.
The image that went into Pickle’s head was when he slit the throat of a young man when three uninvited guests entered Sandy Lane without permission. Cutting the man’s throat was Pickle’s way of telling the other two not to return. It was an incident that would plague him now and again, despite the violence he used to perform during his drug days, and wondered often if he could have handled the situation better.
Even Vince was brutal in the first weeks, when he was running his own camp. If people wanted in, they would have to perform difficult initiation tests.
As if he could read their minds, Drake laughed, breaking the minute silence, “That’s what I thought.”
“I think it’s time to go.” Pickle stood up and Karen did the same. Pickle added, “I’m glad yer brought us here. It proves that yer not the monster that we thought yer were, and I hope that this can improve our relationship with one another.” Pickle walked over to Drake and held out his hand.
“You never gave me a response,” said Drake.
“Response?”
Drake never shook Pickle’s hand and said, “Join us.”
“I gave yer an answer back at Colwyn Place.”
“No, you didn’t.” Drake shook his head. “You said that you didn’t know. Leave that stifling street and you, Karen and everybody else move in here.”
Pickle looked at Karen, but her face was expressionless.
“I told yer before, I’ve only been in charge for a week or so,” Pickle began. “And yer want me to give it up? John Lincoln had built—”
“Fuck your pride,” Drake snapped, “and fuck John Lincoln. I’m offering you a great opportunity
here. Our facilities are great and it will get better. This is a good deal for us because the more people come here, the stronger we become. And it’s a good deal for you guys because the facilities, the security ... everything is better.”
“Your guys came to our street a couple of weeks ago and killed people,” Karen said.
“And you killed ours,” Drake said. “We were simply looking for Jez and the now exonerated Craig, that we kindly brought back to your camp, but you drew first blood. Anyway, I thought we weren’t going to go over old ground. If we want to be civil to one another, it’d be better to leave the past in the past. I’m sorry it turned ugly and that a toddler died, but we can’t continue to keep harking back if we want to move forwards together.”
“My point is,” Karen huffed, “If you let me get a fucking word in edgeways, is that you have people here who probably have lost a brother or a friend on that day and we may not be made welcome.”
“Nobody knows who killed who on that day. The only person that would be in danger, if he came here, would be Paul Dickson, and he’s now gone. He killed a few that day and it was witnessed by a few of my guys. He also killed our harmless pickup driver, who wouldn’t have harmed a fly.”
“Paul was protecting the camp,” said Pickle, defending a man that wasn’t in the room.
“Maybe.” Drake nodded. “But listen to us; we’re going over old ground again. Now, we’re going to take you back to your place and you can think about it. Tell the people in the street about what we have here.”
Pickle said, “Some may think it’s some kind o’ trap.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Drake laughed. “Do you?”
“O’ course not,” Pickle shook his head. “If yer still wanted retribution, we would have been dead by now.”
“Exactly.”
“What happens if we eventually say no?” Pickle asked him. “Are yer gonna get the hump with us?”
“Of course not,” Drake laughed. “Even if you say no, I would like to work together in some capacity. Plus, we could use your street as some kind of outpost.”
Snatchers Box Set, Vol. 4 [Books 10-12] Page 74