Snatchers (Book 14): The Dead Don't Hate

by Whittington, Shaun

  Drake shut the door and said to the woman, “Are you going first, or shall I?”

  “I would like to go first.”

  “So how do you want to do this?”

  “From the back,” she said.

  “Okay.” Drake nodded. “And you’re clean, right?”

  “As a whistle,” she laughed.

  “Okay.”

  Beverley pulled her trousers and knickers down and bent over the table.

  “Okay,” Drake sniggered. “Going in.”

  Drake went behind her, playfully smacked her behind, and dropped to his knees.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Well, this is nice,” Vince said with a smile.

  The sounds of rotten hands continued to slap the door, and both experienced survivors, Vince and Mildred, seemed unmoved by the dead trying to get in.

  Vince leaned his head back and grinned. “This reminds me of a time I was stuck in this woman’s bedroom.”

  “Should I ask?” Mildred wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear the whole of his story.

  “I won’t tell you if you don’t want me to.” Vince pointed at the door behind them and said, “With our new fan base, I have a feeling we could be here a while.”

  “I think we can take them,” Mildred said.

  “Maybe, but it’s too risky. There’s six of them and it’s dark.”

  “So?”

  “Be better if we waited for the cavalry to arrive.”

  “You mean Pickle, the young lad, and the two fourteen-year-olds?”

  “One of those fourteen-year-olds has killed more of the dead than some of us.” Vince puffed out a breath and said, “Let’s wait a while. Be patient.”

  “Okay.” Mildred rubbed her eyes and said to Vince, “So tell me about this bedroom you were stuck in.”

  “About a few years ago, I was seeing this married woman. Her husband worked night shift, so we had this arrangement to see one another on the evening. Low and behold, he took unwell as soon as he got to work and came back. Of course, we never heard he was in the house. She was moaning that much, bouncing on the old Kindl pogo stick, that we never heard him until the sound of running feet could be heard coming up the stairs. As I heard the sound, I panicked, threw her off me, and pressed myself against the door to stop him coming in.”

  “How did you get out of there?” Mildred asked.

  “I managed to drag a cupboard against the door, while holding the door with one hand, and then I made my escape through the bedroom window.”

  “Naked?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Not entirely?”

  Vince smiled and reflected on the incident. At the time it was a moment of panic. The woman’s husband was a karate instructor on an evening, and Kindl knew he’d come off second best if the two of them came to blows.

  Vince explained his ‘not entirely’ comment. “I had a Mario Brothers T-shirt on, and that was it. Didn’t have time to put the rest of my clothes on.”

  “So you ran home almost naked?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Not entirely ... again?” Mildred giggled.

  She was beginning to warm to Vince. He was good entertainment.

  “I grabbed her pants that were strewn on the floor, and put them on. I didn’t have time to look what I was putting on. It was the only thing I could reach.”

  “So you ran through the streets wearing a Mario Brothers T-shirt and a pair of ladies knickers?”

  “Hobbled,” Vince corrected. “I didn’t run. I sprained my ankle once I jumped out of the window. I didn’t want to go through the streets with my tackle out.”

  “She didn’t mind about the knickers?”

  “No idea.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had threw her off the bed when her husband came up the stairs so vigorously that she was almost unconscious, lying on the carpet, moaning.”

  “No way.”

  “Anyway, I managed to escape by going through the window before he could grab me. Happy days.”

  The banging behind them persisted, but it wasn’t as audible as it was two minutes ago. It sounded like less effort and less hands hitting the door, as if the dead had grown tired of trying to get in.

  Once it dwindled down to just one pair of rotten hands hitting the door, the conversation continued, but they talked in a quieter tone than before.

  “Anyway,” Vince said in almost a whisper. “That’s a story I’ve never told anyone before, maybe Stephen, so your turn.”

  “What do you want me to tell you?”

  “You’re a bit of an enigma, Mildred,” Vince spoke. “No one knows much about you.”

  “I’ve only been around just under a week,” she said, almost defensively.

  “Well, tell me a secret,” Vince persisted. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. Who knows? We could die in here.”

  “God, don’t say that. I don’t mind putting a bullet in my brain, but if we do die here today, then it’s because those fuckers out there have ripped us to pieces. We’ve all seen it happen. It’s the worst way to go ... ever.”

  “Agree with that.” Vince nodded.

  The two became silent and Vince wondered how long it would take Pickle to spark into action. How long did they need to be absent? Ten minutes? Longer?

  The last set of hands had given up slamming the door, and Vince decided to speak to Mildred further. Mildred didn’t seem to be in the mood to tell Vince a story, so he decided to speak once more.

  “I remember Lee and I went out one of the weekends—”

  “I had to kill my own parents,” Mildred blurted out, interrupting Vince’s sentence. She then cleared her throat and dropped her head with sadness.

  “Go on.” Vince looked at the woman with sympathy. “If you want.”

  “My partner was out the night before, Saturday night, and I went up to see my parents after watching the news on the Sunday morning.”

  “Were they there?”

  She nodded. “The house was littered with Snatchers and there was nothing left of them. My dad’s remains were in the front garden and my mother was in the kitchen, back door wide open. I don’t think they even knew what was going on. Probably didn’t even see the news. At their age, social media wasn’t really a big thing.”

  “Their age?”

  “Mum and dad had me late. I think I was a surprise. They were in their late sixties when they died.”

  “Did you go back to your place?”

  “For a while.” She nodded. “Tried my partner again.”

  “Wasn’t he answering?”

  “She,” she corrected.

  “Oh”

  “Anyway,” Mildred ran her fingers through her blonde hair. “I tried to call my best friend Julie to see how she was, but there was also no answer.”

  “Dead, you think?”

  “I hope not. If so, then her kids and husband are probably dead as well. Her kids were the absolute cutest. Kyle and Bell.”

  Vince scratched his grey hair and it took a few seconds to process what she had just told him. He lowered his head and began to think, then looked up at Mildred.

  “Kyle and Bell?” Vince queried. “Is that what they were called?”

  Mildred studied Vince’s face and asked suspiciously, “Yeah. Why?”

  “Um...” Vince ran his palms over his face and released a sigh. “Was your best friend married to a guy called Paul Dickson?”

  Mildred looked at Vince strangely. “How the—?”

  “He was with us for a while,” Vince began.

  “With you?” Mildred gulped. She was fearful that Vince had only mentioned Paul being with them and not the rest of his family.

  “Yeah.”

  “What about Julie, and…?”

  “There’s no easy way to say it,” Vince began, “but we found Paul and his son a couple of months ago. His wife and daughter were already dead. He met some guy called Bentley and they went to a supermarket car park and found t
heir bodies in the family car. Bentley shot them both. They had both turned.”

  Mildred placed her hand over her mouth and could feel the tears fill her eyes. “She texted me on the Saturday morning, asking if I wanted to meet with them afterwards. I said no. I was too busy.”

  Vince looked at the woman with sympathy and was about to speak, but she threw a query at him.

  “Where’s Paul and Kyle now?” she asked.

  “We went to a few camps and young Kyle was killed by a Snatcher. Paul was devastated, obviously. And that was the beginning of his decline. I think Kyle kept him sane, but when he died...”

  She assumed they’d be dead, but Vince Kindl had just confirmed it. Only Paul was alive, maybe. She felt sadness. There was a little hope that they could have made it somehow and was surprised by Paul’s behaviour, but the apocalypse had turned or killed most people. Mildred Huxtetter was officially a killer, a lot of survivors were, but the thought of her friend and her children dead, and her grieving husband turning into a loose cannon, saddened her.

  Paul Dickson may still be alive, but what was his quality of life going to be like from now on?

  “Wait a minute.” Vince placed his hands on his head. “You two weren’t that far away from each other the other week, you and Paul.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, it was Paul that turned up at the field and killed all those Snatchers when Craig and Stephen were stuck in that ditch.”

  “Was that him?” Mildred gazed for a while and added, “I know they mentioned the word Paul... I didn’t realise it was him.”

  “You must have missed each other by minutes. He put down the dead and helped Stephen out of the ditch, whilst you were hiding under the bridge.”

  “Jeez, don’t say it like that,” said Mildred. “You make me sound like a coward. I had no choice.”

  “Sorry.”

  Vince looked at the outline of Mildred’s face and could feel that she was upset from the news he had just given her. The silence between the pair of them lasted a few minutes and Vince decided not to speak. It sounded like Mildred was doing her best to fight back the tears and Vince leaned his head back and closed his eyes, but Mildred spoke up.

  “My name isn’t Mildred,” she blurted out.

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “I’m not gonna ask you your real name,” Vince said. “You must have changed it for a reason.”

  “New world, new me.” She smiled.

  “Why change it to Mildred?” Vince snickered gently. “And I have no idea where you got the weird name Foxtrotter from.”

  “It’s Huxtetter,” she laughed. “Mildred Huxtetter.”

  “Oh, that’s so much better,” Vince said with sarcasm.

  “You should Google it, and then you’d know where I got it from.”

  “Yeah, very funny. Bloody muppet.” He laughed, “Google it.”

  Mildred sniggered and Vince asked what she was laughing at.

  “Forget it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Karen had gone for a walk around the grounds and was called over by a guy of name that escaped her. He gave her a mundane and short tour of the two greenhouses. She was impressed with the amount of produce that was there, including peas, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, carrots, plus more that she couldn’t remember.

  She thanked the man for going out of his way to show her what was being produced and looked over to the patch of grass near the large shed. Darren was creating a small barrier around the patch of grass, using broken branches stuck in the ground and string tied around them. It didn’t look great, but once he was finished, the chickens were going to be let out of the large shed and allowed to roam on the grass. It hadn’t been established whose job it was going to be bringing them into the shed on an evening.

  Maybe the shed would be left open and they could go in and out when they please, she thought. It wasn’t something that plagued her thoughts. She was worried about Pickle. Her mind was always clouded with concern whenever Pickle was out on a run without her. She feared that one day he would never return.

  “Hello, Karen.” The voice had given her a fright, and the twenty-three-year-old gasped and turned to see a smiling Findlay.

  “You not on the gate?” she asked him.

  “Just finished,” he said. “Big Gordon is on for a few hours.”

  “I don’t know who Big Gordon is,” she mumbled, and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Where’re you off now?”

  “Um...” Findlay looked agitated all of a sudden and Karen immediately found his behaviour suspicious. “Gonna have a game of cards.”

  “Game of cards?” Karen eyed Findlay. “You don’t seem so sure about that.”

  “See you later, Kaz.” He tapped her on the arm and made a hasty escape. She watched as the young man entered the outpatients building and decided to follow him, if she could.

  “Karen!” a voice called over. She turned and could see Stephen Rowley at the exit of the outpatients building at the opposite end.

  “You want me?” she called over to the man who was almost thirty yards away.

  “Yes, chap!” he called back. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “It’s gonna have to wait.” She waved him away and walked briskly, almost jogging, towards the door where Findlay entered.

  She stepped inside and walked down the open part of the building and could hear voices coming from around the corner of the wall, down the hall. Karen approached the corner and peered her head round and could see a long hall, with the doors to the wards on the left. It was a hall she had walked down many times over the years, but the days of her being a nurse at this hospital seemed like a million years ago now. Some days she would feel nostalgic and emotional, but on other days she wouldn’t feel anything.

  “You keep watch,” a voice spoke up. The voice was female. It was a voice that Karen didn’t recognise.

  A male voice responded, “Why don’t you keep watch?”

  Somebody stepped out and Karen immediately moved her head back.

  Something sinister was going on and Karen was more than intrigued.

  It seemed that whatever the meeting was about, it didn’t involve Drake. He was nowhere to be seen. What was going on? Was it some kind of rebellion? Drake spent a lot of time telling people what to do, was violent, and drank.

  Were they plotting his downfall? Karen was aware that Drake was hardly the perfect leader, but he was taking on this added pressure that most people didn’t want, and for what?

  Karen was reluctant to peer around the corner again in case she was spotted. She had no idea if the individual that was asked to keep watch was still there. She hoped they weren’t, as she wanted to progress down the corridor and listen in on what was being said. Something was happening, but she didn’t know what.

  If she peered her head around the corner and was spotted, then that would make out that she was snooping. Instead, Karen decided to walk around the corner as if she was just taking a stroll. If somebody was still out there, she could use the excuse that she just wanted to stretch her legs.

  She made a decision to wait a few minutes and then walk around the corner.

  “Is everybody here?” she heard someone ask. It sounded like Findlay.

  Maybe she was blowing this all out of proportion. Maybe they were playing cards and Drake had banned it because of betting. She shook her head. Her mind was conjuring up all kinds of ridiculous scenarios.

  She took in a deep breath and walked around the corner, as casual as she could, and could see the back of a man, standing outside the ward door. He never spotted her, so she turned and crept back around the corner.

  Whatever was happening, Karen was certain that cards wasn’t being played. It was some kind of meeting.

  She peered around the corner once more and could see it was clear. Talking commenced, but in hushed voices, and Bradley had her back against the wall
and slowly crept down. Most of the words that were spoken were inaudible, but Colwyn was mentioned, along with Pickle and Drake.

  Chairs could be heard scraping along the floor, which suggested to Karen that people were getting up. It had been a short meeting.

  She ran as lightly as she could, trying to get round the corner before she was spotted.

  She had managed it and left the building, walking briskly. She went over to the patch of grass where Darren was still setting up a fence, and had a sneaky look when she saw six figures leaving the outpatients building the same way Karen had left.

  She could see a man called Bill who she had only spoken to once.

  A young woman called Helen was part of the group as well as Ronnie’s pal, John, a sixteen-year-old called Christopher, Drake’s brother, Alan, and Findlay.

  Karen watched them walking towards the greenhouses and then they dispersed and went their separate ways.

  Karen puffed out a breath and placed her hands on her hips. “What the fuck is going on?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Harry Branston told the group that he was going to go after Vince and Mildred in one minute. They had been away long enough, Pickle thought. He was confident that they were fine, but was wondering what the hold up was. The ground floor of the place was clear, and if there was anything untoward on the first floor, he knew that Vince and Mildred were more than capable of handling themselves.

  Pickle paced the road up and down, whilst the rest were by the back of the vehicle, doors open, and made a decision to look for them.

  “I’m gonna go in and see what the hold up is,” he said to Stephanie.

  Stephanie and David were leaning against the passenger door of the vehicle, and the female nodded and said, “Okay, Pickle.”

  He headed for the Workout World establishment and looked around the industrial estate, wondering if the pair of them had decided to check out the other places. Pickle looked at a shop called “Electricals Are Us’ and shook his head.

  Why would they check an electrical store in this day and age?

  He looked up to the first floor of the Workout World establishment and wondered if they were still in there. Only one way to find out.