Chapter Thirty-Seven
The jeep had been away for a matter of minutes, with Drake, Pickle, Karen and Vince inside it, and Terry and Joanne stood near the gate nervously, hoping that everybody would come back safe.
“We better go inside,” Terry told Joanne, looking over at the Snatcher he had put down earlier and had dragged to the side of the road.
Joanne nodded.
“If they do distract them and get the dead to follow them, then we don’t want any of them going by the gate and spotting us standing here.”
“I’ll watch from the window.” Joanne patted Terry on the back and walked away, back to her home, waving to a petrified Old Tom who was peering from his living room window.
Joanne pointed over at the stationary pickup that Drake, Patricia and Frank had arrived in, and said, “We should really park that pickup next to the gate, for added insurance.”
“And what happens if the guys come back and need to get in?”
Joanne went inside her house, as Braithwaite did the same.
Terry, like everybody else, watched the gate from inside his house and hoped to see the jeep passing with the gang of the dead following, away from Gnosall, and, more importantly, as far as he was concerned, away from Little Haywood altogether.
“Come on, come on,” Terry hissed. “Where are you?”
Then suddenly a moment made Terry gasp and his carotid artery hammer under his skin. Another horde went by the gate, along the road, and Terry was certain that Pickle and the rest didn’t know about this. It wasn’t as large as the first one, almost half the size, but it was enough to cause damage to the jeep.
What Pickle didn’t know was that he was going to lead the fifty or so dead from Gnosall, only to run into another horde. They were going to be surrounded.
Frank ran out of the house, once the horde disappeared, and Terry left his place to see what the man was doing.
Terry ran out of his front door and called over to Frank, who was about to get in the pickup.
Frank turned and said to Terry, “We can’t leave them out there. They’ll be massacred.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know. I need to try something.”
“I don’t want you putting this street in danger.”
“That’s my pal out there,” Frank snapped at Terry, “trying to save a village from being attacked. I need to do something.”
“And what’s that?”
“Just do what they’re doing.” Frank shrugged his shoulders and didn’t really have a definitive plan. “Drive up to the back of the smaller horde and blare the horn, distract them.”
Frank patted his pockets and cussed, smacking the palms off his head in anger.
“What is it?” Terry asked him.
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I won’t be going anywhere.”
“Why?”
“Drake has the keys,” Frank groaned.
Terry turned to see Paul Smith and Brenda Hatchet standing outside on their doorstep, front door ajar, wondering what was going on.
“It’s okay,” Terry called over. “We’re going back inside!”
A bang was heard above them and Frank and Terry ducked, wondering what the hell was going on.
Frank was the first to respond and said, “What the fuck was that?”
Nobody knew, and nobody answered, or tried to answer, Frank’s query.
“Back inside!” Terry cried. He looked around and could still see Brenda and Paul Smith on their doorsteps, looking shocked. “Everybody, back inside.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Pickle was in the driver’s seat, and an agitated Drake, Vince and Karen were becoming nervous. Karen was next to Pickle and they were crawling in first gear at five miles per hour, with the dead moving twenty feet in front of them.
Every single one of the dead still had their backs to the jeep, some munching on the poor calf, and wasn’t aware it was there.
“How long before you actually do something?” Drake asked.
“I’ll do something now,” said Pickle.
The jeep stopped and Pickle began turning the vehicle around in the small road. Once the jeep was now facing away from the dead, he gave a quick blast of the horn. All four turned and looked over their shoulders and could see one of them from the horde turning around.
One by one, more faces turned around until the four in the vehicle could see a crowd of dead faces looking at them, with their almost white eyes.
They started moving towards them and Pickle got the vehicle ready for moving.
“I’ll keep it in first,” he said. “That should be enough.”
“Some are moving quicker than the others,” said Vince.
“I remember Jack Slade once telling me,” Karen began, “that when he first arrived at Rugeley on a motorbike, some of the dead were almost running after him.”
“That’s bollocks,” Drake laughed. “The dead don’t run.”
“Anyway,” Pickle moaned. “Even if some do catch up with the jeep, they’re only gonna slap it and stuff. They can’t get in.”
“I don’t see a single one hanging behind,” said Vince. They went round a bend and they could see the size of the crowd from almost at a side angle. The road straightened up for a matter of fifty yards and then there was a sharp bend to the right. They couldn’t see anything to the side of them due to the endless six-foot hedges that ran along the side of the road.
They were near Colwyn Place.
“This is gonna take ages,” Drake huffed.
“Chill out,” Karen giggled. “Twenty minutes or so and we’ll be leading them away on the Rugeley Road.”
“Is it always like this in the countryside?”
“No,” said Pickle. “We’ve never come across anything like this. It’s just a coincidence that yer here and this is happening now.”
The jeep made the bend and Pickle hit the brakes when his eyes clocked something horrific.
All four could see a second crowd of the dead. This horde was half the size of the one behind them, but it shook them up, and Karen was the only one to speak. There were now two hordes, one in front and the larger one behind.
“Fucking floor it!” she cried. “We’re surrounded.”
The dead in front quickly surrounded the vehicle, and the crowd behind, that was more than twice as big as the one in front, were only a matter of yards away.
Pickle hit the accelerator and the front of the vehicle hit some of the dead.
He tried to quickly go through the gears, but the vehicle wasn’t progressing as he would have liked.
The vehicle was now surrounded by the dead.
Over seventy Snatchers were around the jeep, and Pickle stalled the car, trying to move away in second and going nowhere.
“Hurry up!” Karen cried.
“I’m trying,” Pickle snapped back.
He fired the engine and slipped the jeep into first to move away, but it was progressing slowly. He looked in the rear view mirror to see if it was worth reversing, but all he could see in each window was a sea of dead faces.
The dead started to slap the windows of the jeep, and some even crawled on top of the bonnet.
“It’s moving,” said Pickle. “Not very fast, but it’s moving.”
The windows started to crack and all, but the driver, pulled out their weapons. Drake’s window was the first to cave in and a dozen arms spilled in, grabbing and pulling him towards the window.
Drake stabbed at them manically, and two heads popped in and gnashed at the man’s fingers as his blade stabbed repeatedly at anything that moved.
Karen’s window was next and she moved away, nearer to Pickle, trying to flee the rotten hands trying to grab her. Vince looked to the roof of the vehicle, double checking that there was definitely no sunroof to escape through, and leaned over Drake and rammed his machete into the top of the head of a Snatcher trying to force its way in.
“This is no good!” Drake crie
d. “All we’re doing mostly is stabbing their hands and arms!”
“Well, what do yer suggest?” Pickle called out in anger. “Going out there? Can’t get the doors open anyway.”
“Won’t need to!” Karen yelled. “They’ll be coming in soon!”
Drake was almost on Vince’s lap as the arms grabbed at him and Vince was aware that to the right of him, his own window, was cracking and slowly giving way.
“I’m getting out of this in one piece!” Drake raged. “I’ve got whisky back at the hospital to drink.”
“We’re fucked, guys,” Vince said, trying to brush off the hands that were grabbing his hair and t-shirt. “We really are this time.”
“Don’t say that!” Pickle snapped. “I haven’t left prison in an apocalyptic world and survived for four months to be eaten in a fuckin’ car. That ain’t gonna happen.”
“That’s the spirit!” Drake yelled,
“Pickle, I’m scared.” Karen turned to her friend and he could see rare fear on her face.
“We’ll get through this, Karen.”
“Will we?” Tears filled Karen’s eyes.
He thrashed the car and moved it up to second, but despite the vehicle moving a little, the engine was screaming out and the smell of burning assaulted their noses. He turned the engine off, then fired it again and tried to pull the vehicle away, but the sheer volume of bodies was making it impossible for the vehicle to move.
“There must be some o’ them stuck in the axle. A big jeep like this shouldn’t be strugglin’ to get through these bastards.”
Pickle’s and Vince’s windows caved in almost at the same time and both men were grabbed around the face. Karen released a scream as more Snatchers reached in and hands grabbed her hair and began pulling.
“Pickle!” she yelled.
“Jesus Christ!” Pickle cried out. “God, help us!”
Harry Branston couldn’t get to his machete as the hands grabbed at his face, hair and clothes, and could see that his three passengers were hopelessly swiping at hands and arms and only creating wounds and taking off fingers.
The rotting fingers were everywhere and Harry Branston couldn’t see a way out from this at all.
“This can’t be the end,” Pickle murmured. “Please, this can’t be the end.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Paul Dickson watched as the first rocket exploded in the air. The bang was louder than he could have imagined, like a bomb, and made him jump and almost duck.
He knew that the dead would have heard it.
Everyone in a two-mile radius would have heard it, and he hoped he had released it in time before they managed to cause carnage. The only thing that worried him was that the strays elsewhere could be attracted to the noise and turn up and make things worse, but he had to try something.
There was a danger that other hordes could also turn up, but the people at Colwyn Place couldn’t be ignored by Dickson. He had lived there for a few weeks, and couldn’t just sit by and possibly allow seventy or so dead attack the place.
He knew that it would be minutes before it was established that his plan had worked and didn’t want to take any chances. He had three more to release, and the final one would be let off once they were near, when he could physically see them.
At the moment they weren’t even in view.
The first bang may only attract their attention and turn heads, but a second and a third couldn’t be ignored, even by those dopey bastards. Surely that would entice them towards where the noise came from.
He counted up to one hundred and eighty seconds and then released the second rocket.
This time, because of the first one, the noise didn’t make Paul jump, but it was still a hell of a bang when it exploded. He watched as the trails of sparks scattered and fell from the sky, like glitter. It was something that would have looked impressive during the night, and he counted up to one hundred and eighty seconds once more.
Dickson dropped to his knees and struggled to get a flame at first. Once he had managed it, some thirty seconds later, rocket number three was lit and he waited with anxiety, hoping to see the horde in his vision and heading over the Wolseley Bridge.
“Come on, you dirty fuckers,” Dickson snarled. “Where are you?”
Dickson could hear noises behind him and peered over his shoulder to see four Snatchers, three males and a female, making their way down the hill, through the bracken and allowing the branches to scrape and scratch their faces without a wince.
Paul Dickson released a groan and pulled out his machete, ready to put the four down.
The blade buried into the side of the head of the female, leaving the three males left to put down.
Dickson raised his blade and bent his knees as the three staggered towards him. He brought down the blade and put one male to the floor, but the two dead quickly grabbed him and all three fell to the ground.
Dickson dropped his machete and was using his hands, one hand each underneath the chin, to keep both of them from taking a bite out of him.
Dickson released a growl, trying to muster some energy from somewhere, and smacked their heads together. It didn’t kill them, and the man managed to push one of them off him and reached for his machete with his left hand as the dead male was trying to get to its feet.
He hit the dead male with everything he had and it was enough to bury the blade at the top of its head, putting it down permanently.
Dickson was losing the fight with the final dead being, and had to use two hands to keep it away from biting him. Dickson was weakening and could see his machete sticking out of the skull of one of the dead, out of reach.
“Oh, fuck it.”
Dickson released a sigh and his hands moved from the chin to the cheeks of the dead man. He wanted to avoid this, but with him weakening and with no blade, he had no choice.
He moved his right hand from the cheek and rammed his thumb into the eye socket of his attacker, twisting his face as he could feel the coldness. He rammed his other thumb into the other eye socket and now had a better grip on the Snatcher, with his fingers wrapped around the side of the head and his thumbs in the eyes like he was holding two bowling balls. He pushed his thumbs in as far as he could and the Snatcher on top of him eventually stopped struggling and collapsed.
Dickson moved the body off him and pulled out his thumbs and wiped them down his t-shirt.
He sat down, with his knees up, and gave himself a few seconds to get his breath back.
He went over to the final rocket and patted his pockets to find his lighter. He couldn’t find it and wondered if he had lost it when he was putting down the dead. He went back to the area where the four lay on the ground and frantically searched the area.
He spotted the lighter by the dead female, picked it up, and jogged back to the rocket by the roadside.
Chapter Forty
Joanne Hammett’s eyes were magnetically on the entrance. They wouldn’t move and she hardly blinked. She was nervous as hell that they had gone out to lure the dead past the camp, along the Wolseley Road, and take them away as far away as possible, but the smaller horde turning up had changed everything.
They were now trapped, and Joanne wasn’t sure if the jeep was strong enough to go through the smaller horde in order to get back. Even if they did manage it, would the plan be back on? Would they entice the two hordes to Rugeley Road? What happens if there was a third? She shook her head and couldn’t think straight.
Joanne could feel tears welling in her eyes and blurring her vision.
“Come on, guys,” she muttered. “Don’t die today. Not the first day back.”
She then released a scream and ducked simultaneously when a bang was heard above her. She wondered what the fuck was happening and looked around the street. She then ran to the other side of the house, peeping out of the spare bedroom that looked out on the countryside, and couldn’t see anything to confirm what the bang was. She gazed out of the window for a minute, but nothing els
e occurred, and so she went back to her room.
She placed her shaky hands on the windowsill and looked out at the street and tried to scan the window of the houses. She could see the woman from Gnosall at Karen and Pickle’s place, and Paul and Gail Smith in their living room.
She rubbed her eyes and reached for the window to open it, but shrieked once more when another bang, like the first one, filled the sky.
Panting, Joanne reached for the window with her trembling hand and pushed it open to let in some fresh air.
“Oh, shit. What was that?”
Her eyes went back to the gate and could feel her heart galloping in her chest, her carotid artery slamming underneath her skin in her neck.
She wondered if the guys were okay, especially Vince. Joanne surprised herself by quietly praying.
“Dear God, please let them come back in one piece. Please save Vince. Give us at least a year.”
Another boom made her jump, but this time she stayed where she was and gazed back over at the gate. Her breathing was still rapid and shallow, and her heart became more violent when the dead started going by the gate.
She feared for Vince and the rest, but she was also scared if some turned their attention to the street and tried to get in. There seemed to be many, and witnessing the end of the horde going by felt like it was taking forever. She didn’t know how many there were. It looked like hundreds, but she guessed that that wasn’t the case at all.
At last, the last few of the dead from the large group had passed by, and not one had stopped to inspect Colwyn Place.
But where were Vince, Pickle, Karen and Drake?
Joanne gazed at the gate. There was now nothing to see, but she couldn’t move her eyes away from it.
The woman had a little cry, and then reprimanded herself. What would Vince say?
Joanne Hammett thought that maybe the bang had come from the jeep itself. Maybe it had blew up. But how would that happen? Did other desperate survivors attack them?
Her mind was going mad with all kinds of scenarios, and she had to tell herself to calm down. Her out of control mind was making things worse.
Snatchers Box Set | Vol. 5 | Books 13-15 Page 62