Dejected and tired, Paul and Jade managed a tired nod and began to follow Karen who was already five yards ahead of them. Jade looked at the back of Karen Bradley and scowled. Jade knew that Karen had a dislike for her, and the feeling was mutual, but nevertheless, she knew that Karen was a tough cookie and that she would rather have her on her side than be against her.
She walked with Paul, their conversation being non-existence. Their feet dragged, their clothes were filthy and their morale was rock bottom. The two in front, Pickle and Karen, walked with more energetic and confident strides. They turned left at a junction to find a vacant road, which made them relax a little; there was no sign of life at all. Their strides continued, while Paul and Jade did their best to catch up.
"Nearly there," they heard Pickle say to no one in particular. A minute later, the two in front stopped and Paul and Jade followed suit. Pickle looked to his left and nodded with contentment, while Paul and Jade eventually caught up and stood next to them. They were at a crossroads and could see a few dead bodies to their right, while to their left, the road that led up to Stile Cop, there were even more bodies further up.
Jade released a smile and immediately came to the wrong conclusion. "Somebody's here," she half-laughed. "The army, maybe."
Pickle shook his head, which was noticed by an unhappy Jade; any little hope she could grab onto was being wiped away by Harry Branston.
"What are you shaking your head for?" she asked with fury in her tone. "Who else could have done this? Who else could have killed these things?"
Karen gawped at Jade and said, "I hate to shit on your cornflakes...but we did this. Just over a week ago."
"What?"
"We got attacked one night." Pickle decided to clear things up and eliminate any confusion and false hope. "We lost a couple o' people. Anyway, Karen created a diversion so me and...KP...could escape with the van. The van killed a few on the way to meeting Karen back here," he pointed to the floor where they stood, "then Wild Bill Hickock here began shooting a few."
Karen lowered her head, and thought back where she opened fire when she should have quickly jumped into the van.
"Shall we go?" Karen stared at Pickle.
They all began to walk up the steep road, stepping over the rotting corpses in the process that even the crows had refused to eat. Another fifty yards and they'd be by the Stile Cop entrance, which they used to block off with the prison van not so long back.
Pickle looked over to Karen and winked. "This brings back memories."
"Yeah." She nodded her head. "Bad ones."
On the 9th June, it was revealed on live television that hostility, riots, a biting epidemic and numerous deaths that were occurring was because of a deadly virus that had occurred under mystery circumstances. Most of the population never realised this until the next morning, and for most of them, they had found out the hard and horrific way.
The following short story tells of one man's struggle once the outbreak had been made official.
SNATCHERS: A Father's Story
***
June 10th
It seemed like another normal day in the city of Glasgow. I had woken up in my bed, alone once again, and found that the house was empty. My daughter had gone out the night before and hadn't returned home. I wasn't too worried, just a little despondent that my nineteen-year-old daughter was having more fun than me. Surely a man in his forties, widowed for four years and reasonably good looking, should have received some kind of 'action' at this time of his life.
After my wife had passed away, I spent my life raising my second daughter. Now, she was beginning to go out to clubs on a Saturday night and sometimes never came back till Sunday daytime, leaving me feeling sorry for myself and all alone. It had been so long since I had been with a woman that I had given up on the idea. It's not that I had decided on a life of being some kind of hermit or bachelor, it's because I was frightened. Imagine a sexy-looking woman sleeping with a man who hadn't been with a woman in four years, it would be like being a virgin all over again, and that first time was something I didn't want to re-live.
It was Sunday morning and the news had filtered through on the television, and I almost spilled my black coffee over my thighs when I saw what was happening. I don't know how long I sat there gawping at the images, but by the time I decided to take a slurp of my coffee, it was tepid. I sat down and for a while I watched the BBC news channel and couldn't believe what I was hearing and what I was seeing.
For days there had been scenes of escalating violence throughout the UK, which baffled me, and I decided to make a note on just some of the headlines that were occurring over the weeks from 2nd June and onwards. It wasn't until the Sunday when I decided to write an account on what was happening as my concern was growing by the day even before what my eyes witnessed on that Sunday morning.
People had been attacked, riots occurred, and according to my local Evening Times, a patient had woken up from surgery and attacked surgeons by biting them. At first I never thought anything of it, apart from that it was terrible, of course, but never thought it could escalate to this level or it could be some kind of virus that you would only see in Hollywood movies.
I was dressed in my black joggies, a green creased T-shirt that I had worn for bed, and a pair of black deck shoes were around my feet. I stood to my feet and felt like a nervous wreck. The first thing I did was grab my phone, and tried to call my daughter.
Answer machine!
I texted her: Where R U?
I only waited a minute for an answer but received nothing. I pulled out a piece of paper and a black biro from the cutlery drawer, and simple scribbled. Stay put!
I had written that just in case she came back and I wasn't there, and then she went out looking for me. I went onto my Facebook page on my phone and scrawled through my page. My daughter had a 'check-in' at the Radisson Blu Hotel just off Oswald Street. I knew where it was. That was going to be my destination. I knew she had a key, so without thinking, I grabbed my car keys and jumped into my Renault. Once I got into the driver's seat, I texted my eldest daughter from a past relationship. Her name was Karen and she lived down in England; our relationship was weak, probably because of the distance, but she was still my daughter no matter what. I waited a few seconds for a response, but there was nothing, so I fired the engine and took a look at the dashboard.
I cursed as I reversed out of my drive onto the main road, as the light on my petrol gauge was in the red. I already knew this from the trip I made the night before when I went to Lidl to get my favourite German beers to sup on once settling down to watch Match of the Day, which was my usual tradition that I participated in every week. When I parked the car on the drive on that Saturday early evening, I decided that I would take the short trip to the Silverburn Shopping Centre the following morning, and fill the car up.
I now looked at my watch to see it was nearly ten on this surreal Sunday morning, and went through every red light on the neglected roads. I thought that either people had heard the news and barricaded themselves in, or they were recovering from hangovers and hadn't had the pleasure of waking up and seeing or hearing the news of this new pandemic sweeping the nation. I took another paranoid look at the gas gauge and prayed that it would be enough to get me to the city centre and back.
It wasn't.
The car coughed and spluttered once I got off the Corkerhill Road and onto the main Paisley Road that led into the town centre. I allowed the car to roll as far as it could until the vehicle got to a flat part of the road near Bellahouston Park. I got out and began to jog lightly and saw people outside the local police station. The small crowd ignored me as I went past and from the cacophony of angry voices, it sounded like they were either trying to get in or were demanding to know why our local police force were doing nothing to help the people in the community.
I knew there were people inside, as I could see the figures in the side windows. Then I heard something that not only made my heart jump,
but something that increased my adrenaline, which I didn't think was possible. I heard an assortment of gunshots, followed by screaming. I refused to look. Surely our own police force weren't shooting at their own people? Then as my feet continued to pound the tarmac, I could hear a voice in the distance via a megaphone stating that more people would be shot if citizens refused to go back into their homes.
A brief thought brushed past me and I wondered if our cowardly police had shot some of them to protect themselves. If a small angry crowd continued to pound the doors of the local police station, two things could happen that would endanger the lives of the police inside: It would attract some of the infected things that had been talked about on the news, or, the crowd itself could end up barging into the station itself, after all, the entrance and reception area was only protected by thick glass.
Trying to shrug off the surreal episode of our own police force gunning down innocent people, I ran along Paisley Road West, and headed past Ibrox. It was a long road and I knew I was still about two or three miles from the city centre, and was a little displeased that two vehicles had passed by me and not one had slowed down to give me a ride. Would I have stopped for them in this situation? Maybe not, if I'm being totally honest.
I wasn't a fit individual, yet the safety of my daughter spurred me on. I was hopeful that she was tucked away safe somewhere. Even better, I was kind of hoping that she had met some guy at a club and was safe with him, rather than drunk or sobering up and trying to get home. My little girl was nineteen years old and in normal circumstances I would have been very worried to wake up and find that she wasn't in her bed, but once watching the news when I sat there with my coffee, my consternation multiplied.
I had been a gym member of the sports centre of Bellahouston Park for years and was still paying the membership, but I hadn't hit a treadmill in the last six months, but you would never have thought it the way I was running. I was like Forrest Gump on steroids.
By the time I got past the Swallow Hotel, I saw three figures stumbling into the road, heading in my direction. Their faces were ashen and I guessed they were the creatures that the news had been talking about. I've seen many a drunk on my travels over the years, as well as individuals who were stoned, but these three 'things' looked to be neither. The good thing about it was they were easy enough to pass and outrun, but I knew if there was a crowd of them and the roads weren't so open, I could be in a serious amount of trouble. I began to feel a little out of breath but my feet continued to pound the tarmac.
I was halfway there.
I put my hand in my jeans' pocket to see if my daughter had called or texted but there was nothing as yet, so I put the phone back into my pocket and continued to run and tried to focus on my breathing and hoped I wouldn't get stitch. I was glad I hadn't taken a jacket as the perspiration was already saturating my T-shirt on this lovely June day.
By the time my weary body had reached Tradeston, I was in desperate need of a breather, and developed my run into a brisk walk. I turned the corner and was now heading over the River Clyde on the George V Bridge. I looked ahead and this was the first time I began to feel the fear in my bones. I was so focused on the safety of my daughter, I never even thought about the consequences that could affect me, even when I ran past the three individuals by the Swallow Hotel.
I continued to stare ahead of me to see seven souls shambling around Oswald Street and heading towards my direction. They were a hundred yards away and still hadn't seen me, but I was frozen with fear and my decision-making abilities had crashed. I pulled out my phone and texted my daughter once again. In city centre. U? I kept the phone on vibrate only, and turned left on the Broomielaw Road, passing Oswald Street and avoiding the seven beings that I was still unsure if they were human or not. If they were human, they were still intoxicated from the night before, as they stumbled clumsily all over Oswald Street.
I began to run along the road with the River Clyde to my left and wondered where the hell I was going and what I should do. Would I have been better off staying at home? Now that my adrenaline had dissipated, my thinking was becoming clearer. I would like to think that most fathers would have been doing what I had been doing, but I seemed to be the only idiot running around Glasgow's City Centre, although to be fair I had started off in a vehicle before it died on me.
I passed a street called York Street to my right and saw one solitary figure walking in the middle of the road. I knew it was one of them. Their movement was similar to the ones that I had seen previously and the biggest giveaway was the blood around his chin, as if he had just fed on some poor soul.
To avoid the seven bodies I saw on Oswald Street, the plan was to get to the hotel the long way round. Even though there was only one of them, the sight of it still scared the life out of me and so I decided to keep jogging up to the next street, which was James Watt Street. I stopped and took a look into the street. It was dead, and not a soul could be seen, either human or otherwise.
Fuck it!
I ran down James Watt Street and began to pick up the pace as I got to the end as I was nearly on Argyle Street which was one of the main streets in the centre, that ran across and led to an assortment of shops and places like Central Station, Candleriggs, Trongate, etc.
As I got to the top of the road and turned right onto Argyle Street, I was pleasantly surprised that there wasn't a soul around. From a distance, I could see the hotel where my daughter had checked in. This time I casually strolled to the establishment, when I say 'casually,' what I mean is that I walked but my head twisted from side to side and behind me, every other second, as I wasn't entirely sure what lurked around every corner of this city at the best of times, never mind now. It used to be a city plagued with a knife culture, but overnight it had been replaced with a bite culture.
As I got nearer to the hotel, my pace began to decrease as I saw two human men under the Central Station Bridge attacking two of the things. I hid behind a concrete pillar as I was unsure whether these two individuals were just violent mercenaries or genuine men trying to defend themselves. One of them was of average height and build, whereas the other was dressed in a security uniform and was obese. I continued looking as they stabbed and slashed their way through the two things. One of them appeared to be donning a cleaver or hatchet of some sort and had embedded it into the head of one of the infected.
Even though the scene was many yards away, I still turned away from the grisly sight. It looked like hard work. Even if armed, I thought that it would still be better to run the other way if ever I came face-to-face with just one of these things. The two men eventually jogged away from the defunct bodies and turned right at Jamaica Street. The heavy guy looked like he was struggling to keep up.
Once they were out of the picture, I ran towards the entrance of the hotel and tried the revolving door, which had been frozen by a security lock, I guessed. I pressed the button that had 'wheelchair access' and I hoped the door would automatically open, but it never budged. It was as if the electrics had been shut down and whoever was inside was trying to keep it that way from a safety purpose.
At the time I kind of half-smiled to myself, because if my daughter were in there, then she'd be safe. I took my phone out and tried to call her again, only to get her answer message once again. I then tried my other daughter, Karen.
From the outside, I looked into the hotel through the glass and saw a security guard stumbling towards me in the reception area of the hotel. I began to panic when I saw the state of him. His tie was loosened; his white shirt was hanging out of his trousers and was decorated in arterial splatters of blood. His face was white, his eyes looked milky and his lips were an awful blue-bruised colour. He was definitely one of them, and I immediately thought of my daughter inside. I hoped to God she was in her room.
Then my worry was intensified when another three members of staff and, what used to look like, a customer, were all moping round the reception area, all covered in blood. Whether it was their own blood
or not, it was hard to fathom.
I saw another two guests appear from the first floor balcony and headed for the stairs that led to the reception area on the ground floor. One of them stumbled down the stairs and crashed to the bottom. It took a while, but it got to its feet and continued to shuffle around. On any other day, I probably would have laughed at what I saw, but I was close to vomiting. I gazed at the melee inside the reception area, and in hindsight it was such a stupid thing to do. I stood there for minutes watching the dead walk, meanwhile, for all I knew, I could have had one of them sneaking up behind me on the street and I wouldn't have known until their teeth sunk into my flesh, because my mind was so engrossed on what was happening inside a hotel that usually put up businessmen/women and held staff parties for bankers and solicitors.
Now it was awash with the dead, and my presence began to attract their attention. Of course, they couldn't smell my fresh flesh, or even get to me, but because their brain was still working, they could still see me and for some reason they knew I wasn't one of them.
The first one was a female. She was dressed in a navy blue suit, her skirt was at knee-length and her face, just like the rest, was ivory colour. Her mouth was blue, and I stared at most of them and realised that they looked reasonably okay for a bunch of dead people. I know it sounds like a daft thing to say, but I was under the impression that they had only been dead for a matter of hours, because it was Sunday morning and they were already dressed, unless they were attacked the night before. Maybe they had trains or flights to catch and were attacked first thing once they stepped out of their rooms. I assumed the rest were in their rooms, either hiding or had re-animated into one of them but was stuck in their rooms. The rooms were electronic; I knew that, because I stayed there a few years ago. As soon as you shut the door behind you, it automatically locks and can only be opened with a specialised card that is handed out in reception. So that was why the population of these things wasn't so great in numbers.
Snatchers 2: The Dead Don't Sleep Page 27