“Didn’t you see what I just did?”
“I saw a fucking coward behead an unarmed and unconscious young man who had his whole life ahead o’ him! That’s what I fuckin’ saw!”
“Good, though, wasn’t it?”
“Yer are one sick bastard,” Pickle spat. “Untie these ropes and we’ll go man to man. Let’s see how tough yer really are.”
Manson walked over to Pickle and held the bloody blade in his right hand. Pickle could see there was still blood running off it.
“What the fuck yer gonna do, yer mad bastard?” Pickle asked, not knowing if he was going to get an answer.
Manson crouched down and smiled at Harry Branston and snarled, putting the blade across his throat, and whispered, “This is where the fun begins.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Graham Fellows was a man in his thirties. He never had a family before the apocalypse began, and was one of the lucky ones that didn’t have to endure witnessing family members dying at the hands of the dead.
His mother and father both died before he hit his thirties and the man had never had a partner. In fact, Graham Fellows was a virgin and had never been lucky enough to have someone. He had known since his teens that he was gay, and never pursued a male partner. His father was a religious man and believed it was wrong, and even after his death, Graham didn’t feel the need to satisfy his sexual needs because of the influence of his father.
He had to spend years of making up stories about one night stands with females, if his dad ever asked, but deep down Graham was certain that his mother and father both knew, but didn’t want to bring the subject up for fear of the truth. Graham Fellows was their only son, and being gay meant no grandchildren for the pair of them.
Graham had lived in Gnosall all his life and worked at the garden centre in Wolseley.
The village was in a mess and lacked leadership before Marsden and his crew showed up, and although he welcomed their arrival, some of the things they did to other individuals who didn’t follow the new-implemented rules were sickening. People he had known all his life had been beaten, and the ones that wanted to leave and tried to escape were killed if they were unsuccessful. Not many people protested about their hard methods because they arrived with vehicles and brought food to the place. Those that did vent their disapproval were beaten, or worse.
Graham had even heard rumours that the tall character that they nicknamed Manson had visited 4 Anchor Way, one of the dozen streets in the village, and had raped both Chrissy and Gail Prendergast, mother and daughter. Gail was a retired teacher and her nineteen-year-old daughter was a student at Stafford College. Her dad had been dead for years.
Graham was now entering Milford and had been on the road for eleven minutes. The vehicle he was driving was an old Meriva. It was a car that belonged to Mr Anderson, but he had died from a heart attack shortly after Marsden arrived at the village.
He looked at the fuel gauge and could see it was on its last bar, but probably enough to get him to his destination and back to Gnosall village.
“Fuck!” he exclaimed.
He slowed the vehicle down as three of the dead could be seen in the middle of the road, near The Barley Mow pub. The vehicle was low in fuel and wasn’t a personal one of Marsden’s, unlike the jeeps he arrived in, so Graham knew nothing would be said if he ran them down and arrived back with the car damaged. But it was a hell of a risk. What if he hit the dead and veered off the road, or it damaged the car’s radiator, or body parts got stuck in the wheels?
It wasn’t worth the risk, he thought. He slowed down and decided to slowly drive by them. They would slap the windows of the car as he drove by, but they wouldn’t get in.
He had a mission set for him by Marsden. He had been volunteered and was too scared to turn him down. It was simple.
He had a message to deliver to Drake.
Graham drove around the three dead and, as predicted, they approached the car and slapped the windows with their rotten hands as he drove by.
“Fuckers,” he groaned.
Graham had killed a few of the dead as the months went by, but it was always one on one. He had little experience handling a group of them and didn’t want to start today.
He went by the pub on his right and ascended a hill that bent sharply.
He knew he was close.
He had been to Stafford Hospital before. It was before the apocalypse, and it was before the huge inquiry that investigated in many unnecessary deaths to patients due to lack of care and understaffing.
He had been a visitor at the hospital when his dad was in for his triple heart bypass and the staff were excellent, so the negative news that came out years after was a surprise.
Graham looked to his left, at the passenger seat, and there was a letter, sealed in an envelope, with Drake written on the envelope in black biro. A letter that Marsden had personally written.
Graham had no idea of the content of what was in the letter. He also didn’t know what was in the brown potato sack in the boot of the car, but both had to be delivered to the gate.
One mile to the hospital.
He turned right at a roundabout and saw parts of bodies strewn across the road and pavement.
The limbs were hard to avoid, and although Graham slowed down and tried to swerve around larger limbs like legs and arms, his tyres still made contact with parts that had been ripped away from the poor victims.
Graham had passed by the worst of it and had to slow down so he could squeeze inbetween two cars that had collided with one another.
Probably happened on the first day, he thought. When the panic was at its highest.
He could see the entrance of the hospital from a distance. He pulled the vehicle over, behind another vehicle that had been abandoned, and turned the engine off. If he drove straight up to the gate, it would cause mass panic and he’d be attacked. Graham also guessed correctly that there were probably guards outside anyway, so he was going to have to watch the place before dropping off the sack and letter.
The street leading to the entrance of the hospital was residential and there were many abandoned cars and overgrown lawns, so sneaking up to the gate was doable.
Graham had a look around and was pleased that there were no dangers about. He stepped out of the car, taking the keys and letter with him, and went round to the boot to get the sack. He looked up the street and saw a guard behind the gate. His back was turned.
Once the heavy sack was slung over his shoulder and the letter and keys in his pocket, he went to the left side of the street and crept across the lawns, keeping out of view from the gate where he could be spotted by the guard, and made the slow process of going up the street by climbing hedges, fences, and dodging garden gnomes, bushes and assembled trampolines. There were two in the front gardens. He reached the final garden and this one had a large garage that Graham could hide behind.
Exhausted from all the climbing, the unfit Graham Fellows decided to have a sit down with his back against the wall of the garage. He sat for a few minutes, then popped his head around the garage wall and watched the gate for a while.
After a couple of minutes, he noticed two guards walking by the gate, going in opposite directions, and after that was witnessed, Graham began to count. He counted three hundred and nine seconds, just over five minutes, when they passed the gate again.
He waited thirty seconds and ran towards the gate, with the heavy sack in his right hand. The guard behind the gate turned around and had a look of panic and surprise on his face. He reached for his radio as Graham advanced, and managed to make the call as Graham placed the sack on the floor, ten yards form the gate.
He took out the letter and put it on top of the sack, then ran as fast as he could down the street, heading back to the Meriva. He jumped into the vehicle and did a U turn in the road, looking in the rear view mirror.
No one was following him, and a smile stretched across the features of Graham. He had achieved the difficult part, n
ow he had to get back to Gnosall unscathed. And with the dead and other desperate survivors out there, this wasn’t always a certainty.
For reasons he was unsure of, Graham put on the radio and was greeted by the noise of crackling. He skipped channels and eventually gave up, turning it off. He remembered the weekend it started and even then most stations were defunct. He had come across one channel that was playing an album of various artists on a loop, which told Graham that maybe the DJ wasn’t there anymore, and another channel that was informing survivors what to do in this crisis to enhance their survival.
Graham sighed with sadness. Those days seemed a thousand years ago, let alone the days when the world was normal, and dropped a gear when he reached a hill. Over the hill was Milford, and he began to sing a tune called Get Miles by a British band called Gomez. He had no radio, but he still had a catalogue of music in his head he listened to over the years.
Graham Fellows sang for the rest of the journey and had made it back to Gnosall with little fuss.
He had delivered, and Marsden was going to be happy with him.
Graham never asked what was in the sack.
He never dared to.
Chapter Fifty
Findlay was daydreaming, thinking about his girlfriend. She was a student at Keele University, studying law, and had been in contact with her for the first few days of the apocalypse and then, on the Monday, he tried dozens of times, but there was no answer. He hoped she’d be like him now: Alive, and in some kind of camp. Maybe the students had taken over a part of the university and were doing what they were at Stafford Hospital.
He could only hope.
Findlay’s ears twitched as his senses picked up a sound. He was facing away from the gate, staring into space before he heard the sound, and could now hear that it was footsteps.
He turned to see a man running towards him, holding a sack. He grabbed his radio and said, “All units, I think we may have a problem at the gate.” He then elaborated what was going on.
The man dropped the sack, ten yards from the gate, pulled out a letter, placed it on the sack and ran away. A silver Meriva was seen pulling out of the street in the distance minutes later, and a voice from behind startled Findlay. It was Drake.
“What the fuck is going on?” Drake snapped. “You said a man was running to the gate. Where the fuck is he?”
“Gone,” was Findlay’s short answer.
Vince and Karen turned up, as well as the guards from outside, and Drake asked Peter and Roger’s replacements if they had seen anything. Their answer was no.
“What’s that?” Vince pointed at the sack, yards from the gate.
“That’s what he left,” Findlay answered.
“What?” Vince and Karen asked in unison, equally confused with the story.
“Explain, Finners,” Drake said. “Because none of us have a clue what the cunt you’re talking about.”
“Okay.” Findlay groaned and put his hands in his pockets. “I saw a man running towards the gate. He was holding that sack. He then put it down and ran away.”
“So he was on foot?” Karen asked.
“He got into a car that was parked halfway down the road and fucked off.”
“Right.” Drake thought for a moment and looked at the sack. He turned to Findlay and told him to open the gate, go out, and open it.
“No way,” Findlay shrieked. “I don’t know what’s in there. It could be snakes.”
“Don’t be a cunt,” Drake huffed, and stepped over to the gate and slid it back. “I’ll do it, for fuck’s sake. There’s a letter on top of it, so it must be a message of some kind.”
He took a step out of the hospital grounds and hesitated for a moment. He gulped, took in a breath, and walked over to the sack. He bent down, grabbed the letter and stuffed it into his pocket, then took a hold of the sack and went back onto the hospital grounds, with Findlay sliding the gate shut as Drake returned.
Drake said, “As soon as Pickle and the rest return, we’re definitely parking that van in front of that gate from now on.”
“Never mind that,” Karen spoke up, riddled with intrigue. “Open up that sack, for God’s sake.”
Drake looked reluctant. They could all see it, but he was the leader and couldn’t back down now. He opened up the sack slowly and kept his eyes narrow, unsure he wanted to see what was in there.
“What’s in there?” Vince was the first to ask.
Drake could see towels individually wrapped around something, the same shape as a football, and was in two minds whether to put his hands in and take out the four circular shapes that were wrapped in the towels, or to just turn the sack upside down and empty it out.
“Hold the bag ... sack ... whatever it is,” he instructed Findlay, his nose wincing with a pungent smell escaping from inside the sack.
Findlay held the sack and Drake placed his two arms in and picked out the first circular shape that was wrapped in a thin brown towel. Findlay remained holding the sack open as Drake placed the object wrapped up on the ground.
Drake puffed out a breath and looked at the three guards, including Findlay, Karen and Vince. Vince nodded at Drake to get a move on, and the thirty-seven-year-old man slowly unravelled the towel. He took a step back as the others gasped and tears filled Karen’s eyes. It was a head. The thing wrapped in the towel was a severed head.
There was no blood on the face, as if it had been washed, drained, or hosed down before being wrapped up, and Vince could feel his throat harden when his brain realised that his eyes were looking at the severed head of young David MacDonald.
“Shit,” Drake sighed.
He liked young David and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Drake had done some despicable things in the recent past, but decapitating a fourteen-year-old kid was the work of sick bastards.
Drake shook his head and moaned under his breath, “What have you Colwyn lot dragged us in to now?”
“Drake?” Findlay was still holding the bag.
Drake looked up and nodded.
He knew that what Findlay meant was that he needed to hurry up. The suspense was torturing everybody.
Drake picked out another object, which they all now presumed to be another head, and placed it on the ground. He rubbed his face and looked up to Vince who was biting his nails, and then Karen who had her hand over her mouth, fearing the worst.
Drake carefully grabbed the end part of the material and slowly unravelled it. It was Richard. Drake looked up at Karen, who had tears in her eyes, and gulped, “Two left.”
“Just do it,” Vince snapped. He could feel his pulse at the side of his neck slamming underneath the skin. He feared for Pickle, but Stephanie had also gone out there and he feared for her safety more than anything else.
Drake placed his hands in the sack once more and pulled out another wrapped head, they all presumed now.
He placed it on the floor and Vince’s eyes filled as he saw part of a blonde ponytail revealed before the towel had been unwrapped.
Karen started crying and held Vince’s hand. Drake began to carefully ‘unwrap’ the towel and even though they all knew it was Stephanie, it was confirmed when the material had been removed and her lifeless eyes looked up at Vincent Kindl.
Karen moved in and wrapped her arms around Kindl.
“Marsden,” Vince spat. “Fucking Marsden.”
Stephanie’s face was pale as ivory and Vince gazed at her lifeless eyes, tears streaming down his face.
“I’m gonna kill ‘em all,” he snapped. “They’re all fucking dead.”
Drake had never seen such butchery and was finding it difficult himself to keep his emotions intact.
“Last one,” he said, and cleared his throat.
Drake reached in and picked up the last head.
“What did they do with the rest of their bodies?” Karen sobbed. Nobody could give her an answer.
Drake placed the wrapped up head on the ground and looked up at a broken Vince and Karen. H
e felt for them, he really did, but he was also annoyed that they had brought this here. The only people Drake had warmed to were Karen and Pickle, and now it appeared that Pickle was dead.
“Do you want to look?” Drake asked Karen, knowing that her and Pickle were close.
She shook her head and wiped her eyes.
“Close your eyes,” Vince told her, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I’ll look.”
Drake shrugged his shoulders, began unwrapping the towel, and said, “Only one way to confirm it.”
Once the head was revealed, Karen turned and looked. She then gasped and placed her hand over her mouth.
Chapter Fifty-One
Dickson still hadn’t touched the beans that were in his bag and was trying to wait until the next morning, but his stomach had other ideas.
He decided to treat himself and have his first tin warm, but that would consist of making a fire, which had to be done anyway. Dickson needed to get more water from the nearby stream and boil what he collected, so he was killing two birds with one stone.
He left the cabin, with his rucksack over his shoulder, and headed for the stream. Once he reached the place, he drank what was left in his jar and then dipped it into the ice cold water and filled it up. He splashed his face a couple of times, and then moved away and progressed through the woods to try and find a place to build a fire. He dropped his bag on the floor and gathered a bundle of sticks.
He placed a flat piece of wood from his bag on the ground and grabbed a branch and put the end of it on the flat wood and began twisting it, using both hands. It took a while, but the friction eventually created hot ember, which he put into the bundle of sticks and gently blew it, igniting the bundle. He added more dry sticks and had a decent fire going after a few minutes. He balanced the jar of stream water on top of the fire and then opened up a tin of beans with the knife that he kept down his sock. The tin was sharp and jaggy once it was off, and he put it into his pocket.
He used a Y shaped stick from his bag to hover the tin over the flames.
Snatchers (Book 14): The Dead Don't Hate Page 19